I thought food stamps were rife with fraud but the republican's beloved
farm subsidies weren't?
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/09/06/2581861/watchdog-finds-major-overpayments-food-stamps-17-million-farm-programs/Wednesday’s report is just the latest peak on that mountain of evidence. The fraud rate in food stamps is down to just one percent from four percent in the early 1990s. Crop insurance programs have an erroneous payment rate of 4.7 percent, while food stamps makes erroneous payments just 3.8 percent of the time. Error rates for SNAP are at an all-time low.
Many of the same conservative lawmakers who decry food stamp fraud have received millions of taxpayer dollars from 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.
So far this year, the House has failed to pass a renewal of nutritional spending legislation. The “nutrition title,” as it’s 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’s overpayments report, effectively guarantees profits 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’s split farm bill threatens to undermine the entirety of agricultural policy in the country. House leaders have pledged to take up the nutrition title this month, but plan to cut food stamps by $40 billion.
