Yes, by all means leave more people without the food to feed themselves and their children.
Yes, by all means leave more people without the food to feed themselves and their children. They probably spend it all on doughnuts and fast food, anyway.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.943cba80c198
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.943cba80c198
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.943cba80c198
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/28/fox-news-wonders-if-we-should-cancel-food-stamps-since-0-09-percent-of-spending-is-fraudulent/?utm_term=.943cba80c198
I strongly suspect any attempt to catch that last 0.1% of fraud would end up costing more than the 0.1% saved in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWhich will probably somehow get poo-poo'ed away with hand waving as they tout their great victory over the free-loaders. Yeah, we spent twice as much as we saved, but we showed them!
ReplyDeleteSo on reflection, I don't think I believe that number, for the following reasons:
ReplyDelete1) That percentage is really very small. It's not quite at the ration of money you lose behind the couch cushions every year, but it's approaching it.
2) It's unsourced, kinda. They (Fox) cite the USDA, but give no link, offer no description, etc. The $70B total is easy to track down, but the $70M is not.
3) The video in the Fox article has the Republican Head mentions 1% lost to fraud, which makes me think at the least that someone may have slipped a decimal point somewhere.
4) Other relatively recent articles say or imply that fraud and/or waste account for something in the neighborhood of a few percent. NYT gave it as 4% for fraud, trafficking, and errors in 2014.
All that said, one percent still sounds like a pretty damn good number. I'm not honestly sure where I'd even draw the line on when to start seriously looking at fraud reduction for the simple reason that I have no well-founded idea where it becomes profitable to do so without adversely impacting the intended recipients.
I'd be highly surprised if it was only 0.1%. Just because fraud in anything is typically much more than that. Is that perhaps only the fraud that was caught this year?
ReplyDeleteI have no well-founded idea where it becomes profitable to do so without adversely impacting the intended recipients.
Oh, but you don't need to — after all, adversely impacting the intended recipients is just collateral damage and that is unimportant. As is "profitable" — it's not about efficiency, it's about making sure nobody is getting something they don't "deserve".