A recent report by Bret Baire of FOX News followed a California beach bum through his typical day, driving a nice black pickup truck, hanging out on the beach drinking beers with friends and flashing his SNAP card.
SNAP is an acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps…
How does a guy living the life on a California beach do it? The same way many Americans do it. Gaming the system, finding its flaws and loopholes, which are many, and taking advantage.
The following is a post by a person only identified as a Welfare Worker. As I followed previous and subsequent posts it became clear he or she was indeed what they said they were or perhaps even higher in the welfare food chain.
Regardless, what they had to say should be cause for every tax payer to be hammering their elected representatives to clean up and fix a corrupt and broken system that seems to foster dependency and discourage self-sufficiency.
Welfare Worker
Management discourages us from looking into fraud, for all but the worst cases.
I once discovered fraud from a bank statement, the bank statement were not required, but the transactions showed unreported income. I got called into my supervisor’s office and asked “Why did you request a bank statement? You know it is not needed.” I had to apologize, and tell her I did not request it, they just sent it in with the rest of the paperwork. If I would have actually requested it, I would have been in real trouble, but there wasn’t much she could no.
Most of what people think is fraud, is actually just gaming the system – shaping the circumstances so maximum benefits are received.
People can quit jobs to increase welfare benefits for ANY reason.
No work requirements for food stamps in 46 states, mostly done under Bush.
ABAWD regulations suspended for 12 month periods, year after year.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/rules/memo/…
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/rules/memo/…
Many states have no resource requirements. In our county one family got $600,000 in a settlement, quit their jobs and went on food stamps and Medicaid, no problem. This type of think is common nationwide.
People spend more for cell phones and cable TV than for heat, cooling, electric, and welfare programs pay those bills, no fraud.
Many people live off social services, and will not apply for cash assistance (TANF) because they do not want to work or file for child support, no fraud.
It is known that for adults with SSI (welfare) children, half of their income is the SSI – pays the bills not covered by welfare.
(Per the SSA reference below – SSI and children – “On average, SSI payments accounted for nearly 48 percent of the family income of SSI children,”) For all families with SSI children, SSI is nearly half of ALL income. SSI and children.
http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v66n2…
Myth: Most welfare recipients are on benefits a short time.
Let me make that clearer.
At any one time 80% of any given caseload is chronic, repeat for one or more lifetimes.
80% of the money being spent at any one moment in time, is for the chronic, constantly needy, needy by choice, more than circumstances. The other 20% comes and goes on a regular basis, in one door, out the other, never to be seen again.
At any moment in time, only 20% of the total, but over a long stretch (say five years), most of the ones helped were short timers, came and went, just like the myth says, most of the recipients on a short time,but they only use 20% of the total funds available.
80% of the financial help available, goes to those ‘few bad apples.’ That does not sound like a good taxpayer investment to me. It seems to me the lion share of the money should be spent on the temporarily poor, the poor by circumstances, more than choice.
http://www.urban.org/publications/900288…
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Cash Welfare Caseload. In December 2010, the number of families receiving TANF cash welfare was 1.9 million families, consisting of 4.7 million recipients, of which 3.5 million were children. The cash welfare caseload is very heterogeneous. The type of family historically thought of as the “typical” cash welfare family—one with an unemployed adult recipient—accounted for less than half of all families on the rolls in FY2008. Additionally, 15% of cash welfare families had an employed adult, while almost half of all families had no adult recipient. Child-only families include those with disabled adults receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), adults who are non-parents (e.g., grandparents, aunts, uncles) caring for children, and families consisting of citizen children and ineligible noncitizen parents.
http://www.nationalaglawcenter.org/asset…
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Today’s antipoverty safety net is dramatically different from the one in place two decades ago when welfare reform was enacted. Rather than a safety net primarily dependent on cash assistance programs, as is the common perception, the current system is highly reliant on social service programs funded by government and delivered through community-based nonprofits. Annual public and private expenditures for social service programs today exceed total federal outlays for cash assistance programs like welfare, food stamps, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
