A couple of years after the Obama administration slammed American taxpayers with a record-high tab to provide an unprecedented number of people with food stamps, the fraud has continued full-throttle in the bloated welfare program.
Authorities in north Florida arrested nearly 200 people, mostly African-Americans, for operating a sophisticated ring in which millions of dollars in food stamps were fraudulently exchanged for cash and drugs.
Keep in mind that food stamps which was renamed as the Obama administration Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to eliminate stigma was seemingly designed to help nourish the nation’s most needy.
Conservative Organization Judicial Watch reported extensively last year on the rampant fraud in the program that cost U.S. taxpayers a bewildering $80.4 billion in one year to provide a record 46 million people with the welfare benefit during the Obama tenure. Even then, a federal audit revealed that many who didn’t qualify for food stamps received them under a special “broad-based” eligibility program that disregards income and asset requirements.
The expansion was part of the former president’s mission to eradicate “food insecure households” in the U.S. To accomplish it, the administration spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns to recruit more food-stamp recipients, even doling out hefty cash rewards to local governments that signed up the most people.
One state even bragged about a $5 million performance bonus it got from the feds for its “swift processing of applications.”
Not surprisingly, the food stamp program became a hotbed of fraud and corruption. Recipients use social media to illegally sell and buy food stamps online and others use the welfare benefit to buy drugs, weapons and other contraband from unscrupulous vendors, according to a federal audit that also says some trade food stamps for reduced amounts of cash.
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