{"id":18623,"date":"2025-07-15T16:33:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T16:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=18623"},"modified":"2025-07-15T16:33:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T16:33:56","slug":"the-tax-bill-rewards-states-for-higher-rates-of-food-stamp-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=18623","title":{"rendered":"The Tax Bill Rewards States for Higher Rates of Food Stamp Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;Forcing states to cover some of the cost of food stamps would be a big change for how the program operates, and one that is long overdue. &#8220;The federal government pays for 100 percent of the benefits, so state administrators have little incentive to crack down on theft,&#8221; Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute, and a longtime advocate of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cato.org\/briefing-paper\/snap-high-costs-low-nutrition\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">food stamp reform<\/a>, tells&nbsp;<em>Reason.&nbsp;<\/em>While most states are not swindling federal taxpayers as often as Alaska does,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/newsroom\/fns-0003.25\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">more than $1 in every $10<\/a>&nbsp;spent through the food stamp program last year was paid out in error.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;to get Murkowski and Sullivan on board with the bill, the Senate added a sweetener:&nbsp;Any state with a food stamp error rate of more than 13.3 percent will be exempt from the federal-state cost-sharing measure for two years.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;Imagine that you&#8217;re administering the food stamp program in a state like Delaware, which last year had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/fns-prod.azureedge.us\/sites\/default\/files\/resource-files\/snap-fy24QC-PER.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an error rate of 12.37 percent<\/a>. If the Senate version of the tax bill becomes law, you&#8217;d have a pretty strong incentive to simply let that error rate rise a bit for the rest of this year, thus buying you two more years of a fully federally funded SNAP program with no mandatory state spending.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/07\/02\/the-tax-bill-rewards-states-for-higher-rates-of-food-stamp-fraud\">https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/07\/02\/the-tax-bill-rewards-states-for-higher-rates-of-food-stamp-fraud<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Forcing states to cover some of the cost of food stamps would be a big change for how the program operates, and one that is long overdue. &#8220;The federal government pays for 100 percent of the benefits, so state administrators have little incentive to crack down on theft,&#8221; Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute, and a longtime advocate of food stamp reform, tells Reason. While most states are not swindling federal taxpayers as often as Alaska does, more than $1 in every $10 spent through the food stamp program last year was paid out in error.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> to get Murkowski and Sullivan on board with the bill, the Senate added a sweetener: Any state with a food stamp error rate of more than 13.3 percent will be exempt from the federal-state cost-sharing measure for two years.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p> Imagine that you&#8217;re administering the food stamp program in a state like Delaware, which last year had an error rate of 12.37 percent. If the Senate version of the tax bill becomes law, you&#8217;d have a pretty strong incentive to simply let that error rate rise a bit for the rest of this year, thus buying you two more years of a fully federally funded SNAP program with no mandatory state spending.&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/07\/02\/the-tax-bill-rewards-states-for-higher-rates-of-food-stamp-fraud\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[905,221,725,1899,2232,506,141,170,150],"class_list":["post-18623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-bill","tag-donald-trump","tag-food","tag-food-stamps","tag-pork","tag-republicans","tag-taxes","tag-trump","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18624,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18623\/revisions\/18624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}