Thread: Get gov't aid? Ariz. bill says no smokes, alcohol, HBO

Originally Posted by redpony353

But if you want to pick on poor people on the dole, then you need to pick on everyone on the dole, and that includes anyone receiving any compensation of any kind from taxpayers.

That is a scary thought when you think about it. What next? Are they going to start telling people collecting unemployment what they can spend the money on? What about disability? Cant have cable? Cant have a beer? Social Security. No cable, beer, cigarettes? If they qualify then they do...it is because they are poor. Btw, doesnt the hops in beer have some nutritional value? It might be more healthy than soda, which is sugar water. And doesnt cable have educational channels?

That's right and it should be scary. We can't have laws that discriminate between our citizens rights to live their lives based on income. If a government wants to police its expenditures and use of funds based on what people do with their own money, then that would have to apply uniformly, equitably across the board. If someone using government expenditures such as Food Stamps in Arizona is restricted from those funds because they drink beer, or smoke cigs or take a peek at a Playboy or have more channels on their TV than someone else or have a car worth more than $5,000 at some point in its life, then no one in Arizona receiving government expenditures can drink a beer, smoke cigs, take a peek at a Playboy, have more channels on their TV than someone else or own a car that's worth more than $5,000 at some point in its life. That applies to government workers, paid legislators, police, school teachers, defense contractors, farmers, not-for-profits, banks, unemployed, retirees and everyone else who is being personally compensated with public monies in Arizona.

And why stop with these few things Antenori outlined. Why not dictate all the spending done with government expenditures in Arizona? We'll decide how much you spend on haircuts, manicures, clothing, housing, furniture, books, religion, sports, hobbies, exercise, education, appliances, travel, gifts, utilities, pets, children, medical care, drugs, entertainment, food, dining, parties, meat, etc., etc., etc. And it won't be hard either. There's a big Communist Country that's already written it up and operated under something very similar to the concept Antenori is proposing, for, lets see, going on 67 years now.

Small grocery stores hotbeds for food stamp fraud

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

Efforts to reduce the illegal use of food stamps have kept millions of dollars in benefits from going to waste during the past five years, but small convenience and grocery stores in low-income areas continue to be hotbeds for fraud, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The GAO is recommending that the Department of Agriculture intensify its focus on finding stores that violate federal rules and increase penalties for trafficking in misused stamps. The GAO's recommendations, in a report released in October, come as Congress is preparing to revisit the $29 billion-a-year food stamp program next year as part of a giant farm bill.

Among other things, the GAO is urging the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) — the agency within the Agriculture Department that runs the food stamp program — to review the 160,000 stores authorized to receive stamps to determine which are most likely to engage in fraud and to target them for enforcement.

FNS Deputy Administrator Clarence Carter says the agency will take some cues from the GAO report when it proposes changes in the program to Congress.

Households qualify for food stamps if their gross monthly income is 130% or less of the federal poverty level, or less than about $1,799 a month for a family of three.

Food stamp recipients who want to use their benefits to buy something other than food have found many ways to get cash out of the system. Typically, a grocer or store owner willing to take part in such a scheme will pay a food stamp recipient about 50 cents in exchange for $1 in stamp payments, the GAO has found. The retailer then can claim that the $1 was used for groceries and seek reimbursement from the government.

Some small retailers intending to scam the government will stock only the minimum amount of food required to qualify for the program and may let their stock dwindle after they are accepted, figuring inspectors won't return, the GAO said.

The selling of food benefits for cash at small groceries and convenience stores is 38 times the rate of fraud at large supermarkets, where less than a penny per dollar is lost to fraud, the GAO found.

About $241 million in food stamp benefits were stolen in 2005, according to the FNS, which reported that small stores redeemed less than 15% of the food stamp benefits last year but accounted for $190 million of the fraud.

Stepping up enforcement

Despite the problems at smaller stores, FNS officials have told GAO investigators that they allow stores that stock a bare minimum of groceries to enter the food stamp program so that stamp clients in neighborhoods without supermarkets will have places to shop.

Carter says the FNS is intensifying its review of food stamp transactions and sending undercover agents to inspect stores.

"It's a stickier problem than with large supermarkets," he says. "The number of small convenience store retailers outnumbers the large retailers."

Groups that work to expand low-income residents' access to nutritional food say that while more enforcement is necessary, encouraging full-service supermarkets — and their relatively low fraud rates — to open more outlets in urban neighborhoods could be key to ending food stamp fraud.

"Folks would rather buy food than end up with 50 cents on the dollar," says Yael Lehmann, executive director of the The Food Trust in Philadelphia, which helps establish full-service supermarkets, farmers markets and other outlets for healthy food in low-income and inner-city areas. "If there is any solution, it really is on the access piece of this puzzle."

Many supermarket chains, however, are reluctant to build in urban areas, where large plots of land can be expensive and rare, Lehmann says. Buildings may be older and in need of costly renovations, she says, and security also may be a concern.

Giant Food LLC, which has built several full-service supermarkets in urban neighborhoods in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., needs at least 5 acres and $5 million to $7 million to build its standard store, says Barry Scher, Giant's vice president for public affairs.

"You don't go into the worst areas and just hope for the best," he says. "We have to make sure the population is going to produce a successful store."

Debit cards reduce misuse

The amount stolen from the food stamp program through fraud has declined dramatically since 1993, when the program lost about $812 million, according to the GAO. Increased enforcement has helped, as has the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) system, which eliminated the easier-to-trade paper benefit coupons.

In 2002, food stamp recipients began receiving benefits through an electronic transfer into a personal account that can be accessed with an electronic debit card and a PIN number, much like an ATM card. Since then, food stamp fraud has decreased from 2.5 cents for every dollar of benefits to 1 cent per dollar, FNS says.

"We are very pleased that there has been a pretty dramatic reduction" in trafficking, Carter says. "But we can never act as if we've solved the problem, because it's ongoing every single day."

Fraud cases based on analyzing the EBT data now account for more than half of the instances in which stores have been booted from the program, the GAO report said.

Even so, Carter acknowledges that more needs to be done to combat fraud at smaller stores. More fraud takes place in such stores because such businesses are run by individuals and they often do not have inventory control systems or multiple layers of management, the GAO found.

The government prosecutes dozens of cases of food stamp fraud each year and disqualified 841 retailers in 2005, but the GAO report said the civil penalties aren't tough enough to deter traffickers.

Criminal penalties for individuals convicted of food stamp fraud are more severe. A Dearborn, Mich., man pleaded guilty last month to committing more than $380,000 in food stamp fraud over 20 months. Wissam Salameh, 32, manager of a BP gas station and convenience store in Detroit, was convicted of trading cash for food stamp benefits. Salameh, who will be sentenced in February, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Kate Coler, deputy undersecretary for USDA's Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, says the 2007 farm bill "is the perfect opportunity" for Congress and the Bush administration to strengthen the anti-fraud provisions in the food stamp program.

Bush's 2007 budget plan calls for $160 million to fund the FNS office, $18 million more than 2006. The request includes a $4 million increase for "program integrity," which enforces food stamp rules, but it does not include a specific plan for attacking fraud at small grocers.

"One of the keys to addressing this problem will be more resources," says Tom Reynolds, spokesman for Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who will become chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in January.

Posted 12/11/2006 10:26 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... raud_x.htm

When they converted to EBT's in all 50 states in June of 2004, there were still paper coupons in circulation and they were given until July 17, 2009 to be used up by the recipient or they would no longer be redeemable atter July 17, 2009, which is why there was still some fraud abuse going on even after they converted to the EBTs apparently.

However, by 2006, just 2 years into the EBT program, per your article, JohnDoe2, that type of fraud had already dropped from 2.5 cents to 1 cent on the dollar or from 2.5% to 1%. Now that all those coupons in circulation were either used up or expired last year, it is non-existent. The only fraud now would be on the EBT and known by USDA before the store is paid.

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