With the congressional food fight over benefits for the poor about to resume, the federal government quietly released a report on New Year’s Eve that suggests there is still a high need for food stamps.
The statistical report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, also shows that despite partisan rhetoric about food stamp fraud and abuse, a record low rate of food stamps are given out in error – 3.42 percent in 2012 when all errors were accounted for.
But only 2.77 percent of errors involved overpayment, including fraudulent applications for benefits that were approved and subsequently caught. The rest – 0.65 percent – occurred in cases where the government gave fewer benefits, not more, than the recipient was entitled to.
Both kinds of errors have declined steadily, USDA records show. In 2003, slightly more than 5 percent of the cases reviewed were found to have overpayments. This means that overpayment errors have dropped by 45 percent since then.
This does not mean that those applicants should not have received any benefits. The USDA says that more than 99 percent of participants were, in fact eligible — but a small portion got the wrong amount.
This makes the ninth straight year that the national error rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been under 6 percent, considered a standard for recognition, a USDA spokesperson told The Plain Dealer. In fiscal year 2000, the error rate was 8.91 percent.
It is illegal to trade SNAP benefits for cash, but it still happens and draws headlines. The USDA said the trafficking rate is down to about 1.3 percent of benefits, from 4 percent 15 years ago.
A House-Senate compromise over SNAP spending is likely to result in a cut that even Democrats will have to defend, since the Democrat-led Senate has already agreed to one, albeit smaller than what the GOP-led House wants. The Senate bill called for $4 billion in cuts over ten years, and the House bill for $39 billion. The two sides will resume talks toward a compromise next week. Some reports and sources have said a compromise could be in the range of $8 billion to $9 billion in cuts.
The new USDA SNAP Quality Control Report indicates that any cuts are ill-advised, said Jack Frech, director of the Department of Job and Family Services in Athens County, Ohio. The report also points clearly to the real problem, he said.
The problem, he said, is that there are still too many SNAP households with no other source of income for groceries – 21.27 percent of SNAP households nationally and 21.01 percent in Ohio, according to the report. That’s slightly higher than a year earlier, and nearly three percentage points higher in Ohio than two years earlier, according to USDA data.
The average monthly benefit in Ohio is $133.50 per person. SNAP benefits are supposed to help families cover up to 75 percent of their grocery needs.
But the newest SNAP statistical report shows that one in five families has no income or other benefits to help pay for their remaining food needs, Frech said. That means some go hungry part of the month unless they can find help from a charity food pantry or elsewhere, Frech and other advocates say.
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