Abuse is Everywhere

Any program you can create for the needy will have some loopholes, and some outright abuse.  And some will find ingenious ways to commit fraud, and there will also be unavoidable waste as programs are run by people. 

How different is that from any government program at all?  Such as farm subsidies, military spending, and the IRS, even?  Loopholes, abuse, and outright fraud.

In fact, it's not different in private enterprise.  Companies spend millions every year trying to fight internal loopholes and abuse and fraud.  They apparently also spend millions trying to find the government loopholes they can exploit.  It's all in the game.

Here they're decrying a man who continues to be eligible for SNAP (Food Stamps) in Michigan, despite the fact that he won $2 million dollars in the lottery last year.  He has little current "income" and is able to get the benefits because the state stopped looking at assets when the economy went south. 

The idea was, people who had good incomes and lost their jobs, might have things like boats or ATVs that they couldn't sell because no one else had discretionary funding to be able to take those things off their hands.  So they could either eat those toys, or they could qualify for SNAP.  Plus, those who had liquid assets such as money in their savings accounts, would need that money to continue to make their mortgage payments or their car payments while they were looking for work.  Putting jobless people on the streets and without transportation does NOT serve to help the economy get back into gear, it worsens our problems all around.  So feeding them while they're pursuing employment is a reasonable long term strategy.

Look at it from another perspective.  If you have skyrocketing numbers of people on SNAP due to the poor economy, yet your state employees (who administer the program for the Federal Government) are fewer in number because of budget constraints, then removing that asset test allows your workers to complete more work every day without having to take the additional time to document and verify the assets of all the families.  Less strain on an already strained workforce.  We want fewer government employees, amiright?

The last I heard, lots of states had removed the asset tests for SNAP.  In fact, Idaho did this for several years, too.  But because of fears that this very thing would happen here, they reinstated the SNAP asset test this year.  So no welfare queens can be found HERE.  Or kings.

I don't know how I feel about someone getting such a large windfall and still on food assistance.  But I do know we need to be thoughtful in our approach if we want to make change.

Do we make a rule that they are ineligible for a period of time afterwards, even if they blow it?  In the interests of fairness do we also do that for those who have inheritances, insurance payments, Tribal gaming dividends, employment severance packages?  We'll be adding lots of new rules to enforce to try to prevent a few people from taking advantage of our system.  We'll have to pay people to write, promulgate, apply and enforce those rules.  

Seems like a lot of time, money and effort would be spent to make sure Leroy and a few of his counterparts aren't buy Twinkies, Pepsi and shrimp on our taxpayers' dime.