{"id":2069,"date":"2013-09-06T10:59:40","date_gmt":"2013-09-06T16:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2069"},"modified":"2013-09-06T11:00:51","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T17:00:51","slug":"watchdog-finds-zero-major-overpayments-in-food-stamps-17-million-in-farm-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/watchdog-finds-zero-major-overpayments-in-food-stamps-17-million-in-farm-programs\/","title":{"rendered":"Watchdog Finds Zero Major Overpayments In Food Stamps, $17 Million In Farm Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Alan Pyke, Think Progress
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Crop insurance and rural farm development programs issued over $17 million in high-dollar improper payments during the 2012 fiscal year, but the five food assistance programs conservatives frequently criticize as fraud-riddled issued\u00a0exactly zero such payments<\/a>. The numbers come from a report released Wednesday by the Department of Agriculture\u2019s (USDA)Inspector General report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In total, the USDA reported 239 separate high-dollar overpayments with a total value of $20.3 million across all its programs. The federal crop insurance program misspent $14.6 million in 70 different high-dollar overpayments, and programs that provide conservation resources to farmers misspent $2.7 million in 53 different overpayments. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) and four other anti-hunger aid programs targeted at the poor reported zero high-dollar overpayments.<\/p>\n

The USDA review targeted \u201chigh-dollar overpayments,\u201d which are defined as payments at least 50 percent above the correct amount and totaling at least $5,000 to an individual or $25,000 to an organization. That makes the report an imperfect dragnet, which in turn means the report is unlikely to prevent opponents of the food stamp programs fromcontinuing\u00a0<\/a>to\u00a0claim\u00a0<\/a>that anti-hunger spending is rife with \u201cwaste, fraud, and abuse.\u201d Those\u00a0talking points<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0survived\u00a0<\/a>years of evidence that food assistance is in fact among the most efficient and least erroneous federal aid programs, especially as compared to farm programs.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s report is just the latest peak on that mountain of evidence. The fraud rate in food stamps is\u00a0down to just one percent<\/a>\u00a0from four percent in the early 1990s. Crop insurance programs have\u00a0an erroneous payment rate of 4.7 percent<\/a>, while food stamps makes erroneous payments just 3.8 percent of the time. Error rates for SNAP are\u00a0at an all-time low<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many of the same conservative lawmakers who decry food stamp fraud have\u00a0received millions of taxpayer dollars<\/a>\u00a0from the crop insurance program and other farm subsidies. Republican leaders in the House have prioritized those farm programs over the more-efficient anti-poverty spending that has traditionally been included in the farm bill.<\/p>\n

So far this year, the House has failed to pass a renewal of nutritional spending legislation. The \u201cnutrition title,\u201d as it\u2019s known, includes both food assistance to the poor and funding for food charities and other anti-hunger efforts that Republicans say they support. The portion of the farm bill that the House did pass, which includes the programs singled out in Wednesday\u2019s overpayments report,\u00a0effectively guarantees profits<\/a>to the owners of farms that produce sushi rice and other commodities. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the top agricultural policymaker in the Senate, has warned that the House leadership\u2019s split farm bill\u00a0threatens to undermine the entirety of agricultural policy<\/a>\u00a0in the country. House leaders have pledged to take up the nutrition title this month, but plan to cut food stamps by $40 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Alan Pyke, Think Progress click here for original article Crop insurance and rural farm development programs issued over $17 million in high-dollar improper payments during the 2012 fiscal year, but the five food assistance programs conservatives frequently criticize as fraud-riddled issued\u00a0exactly zero such payments. The numbers come from a report released Wednesday by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t