8 ms·

USDA head says 'everyone' on SNAP will now have to reapply

69 points by sipofwater 1y ago

sipofwater 1y ago
Mirror: https://archive.ph/Rx7mV https://archive.ph/Rx7mV
FrankWilhoit 1y ago
[flagged]
tonetheman 1y ago
[dead]
unethical_ban 1y ago
>The secretary said after receiving data on SNAP recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.” >“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” What morally bankrupt, divisive leadership.
- jleyank 1y ago
  They’ll have a few weeks to up and die while the reduced, overworked government staff processes applications. They’ll certainly not slow walk the re-ups…
lokar 1y ago
Ugh, this again? I bet it's the same thing with all the "voter fraud" they find. They get two lists of people (list of votes/program enrollees and one of "dead" people, etc) that were not designed/cleaned for this, and do a very loose match and then declare just based on that it must be fraud. Are there some that are fraud, probably, a bit of that is just the cost of dealing with the public. Private companies get it just as much. But I'll bet almost all of it is either bad matching, poor record keeping, or honest mistakes.
- jeremyjh 1y ago
  Certainly there is some fraud; any system that gives out money will have fraud. But the reason they are doing this is simply to make people suffer.
  - selectodude 1y ago
    Of course. They’re doing all this over $52 million dollars per month. It’s going to cost more than $52 million to have everybody reapply. They want these people to starve to death. It’s a death cult.
CodingJeebus 1y ago
For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1]. So they're making everyone reapply because their disbursement headcount is off by less than 1% (180k vs 41M). It's hard not look at stuff like this and not see gross oppression. 0: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-government-spend-on-snap-every-year/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-gover... 1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets#Alabama https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...
- deadeye 1y ago
  [flagged]
- weird-eye-issue 1y ago
  It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - weird-eye-issue 1y ago
      Who uses the caps lock key to only uppercase a single word?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    It's always a wonder to me when people downplay keeping others fed and healthy.
  - CodingJeebus 1y ago
    You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.
ncr100 1y ago
I wonder if this is legal?
- tkzed49 1y ago
  I'm sure it will be ruled legal if it hurts the right people
Shank 1y ago
I have a friend with life circumstances that are complicated and she survives on SNAP. Every move like this is detrimental and jeopardizes the ability for her to stay alive. I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. I’m sure there is fraud, but there are many people with permanent disabilities and other things going on who don’t have the capacity to “just reapply” without significant effort. There is no need to do this when they can simply audit the usage.
- baby_souffle 1y ago
  > I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. The cruelty is the point; inflict trauma so the opinion of the government and the traumatized individual only worsens. It makes the "do we need this? Seems like nobody likes it and I bet my company could do it cheaper and better..." conversations a lot easier
- jjav 1y ago
  > I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. For the current administration, maximizing cruelty is the whole point and goal.
qgin 1y ago
Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.
- Difwif 1y ago
  [removed]
  - defrost 1y ago
    > If someone doesn't reapply for food stamps then they weren't that critical for their survival. For a good number it might be that they don't successfully reapply due to living on a knife edge that lacks the slack to jump through yet another hoop. The experience here in Australia is that raising welfare barriers hurts those that need welfare the most, the actual fraudsters have the resources to beat the system.
  - chneu 1y ago
    My roommate was born disabled. He relies on SNAP and SSI disability. These extra steps can cause him weeks of stress, physical and mental. These extra steps cost him money he does not have. The stress can set him back physically for weeks. Reapplying, waiting on hold for half a day, going down to offices, etc are not easy for some folks. People fall through the cracks and die. This is called forced attrition. It's pretty common in the business world when companies don't want to fire people. Make it too difficult to bother, so folks stop bothering. Unfortunately this is a literal lifeline for millions of people, so it's more like make it too difficult to bother, so folks start dying.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    It doesn't pass the sniff test. If they "know" 186,000 people are deceased who are receiving benefits, then they can simply stop disbursements to those accounts. It doesn't require any action from those who are alive.
  - 1y ago
ethin 1y ago
This is utterly disgusting. It took me 6 months to actually fully apply to SNAP (and I count the time it took for me to actually get a card). I seriously can't imagine this is legal, but if it somehow is ruled to be so, I can't imagine the idiots doing this actually have a plan for processing the millions and millions of applications. This is the same government who thought putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of making the government more "efficient" was a smart idea, so I imagine this will go just as badly, if not worse.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Most functional states / local county offices have emergency benefits issuance processes that offer same-day service. I'm not sure but I don't think anyone gets SNAP directly, every state has an EBT-based "food stamps" program.
tastyface 1y ago
The Republican government protects pedophiles while starving and abusing the poor. What will it take to wake people up? These people *despise* anyone who's not part of their sick little cabal.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
For context, state-administered food programs paid for by SNAP already treat recipients like criminals with extensive salary, income, assets, and life situation reporting and verification every 6 months to 12 months max. It comes across as just yet another way look down on poor people, waste their time, and spend more money on duplicated means testing already costing significantly more than whatever hunting down every marginal unqualified case hoped to save like "finding" the "welfare queen" or "voting fraud" bogeyman that doesn't exist to demonize one group or another. UBI would probably be a whole lot cheaper than micromanaging what people can and can't buy while not treating the most desperate people with unkind, perpetual suspicion. The truth is this is yet another rug pull surprise to screw over poor people. Not just health insurance subsidy revocations or Medicaid cuts, because some people just aren't satisfied with trillions or all the power.
- cindyllm 1y ago
  [dead]
tsoukase 1y ago
I have some things to note as a non-US: 1) 42 million people underfed in the richest nation in the world is worrisome 2) killing one person is headlines, killing millions is statistics. Today, replace killing with starving 3) people reached at the state to need SNAP because of other incidents (health issues, loss of job, bankruptcy) which are much more expensive to prevented 4) saying to millions just to reapply seems more like social bulling to bring cheels to the masses than an effective fraud measure
- morkalork 11mo ago
  Also from the outside looking in here: those numbers appear mind boggling. More than 1 in 10 people are on the edge of survival? That's many times more than the mythical 3% who toppled British rule in the USA.
IAmGraydon 1y ago
Starving the poor has historically been a very effective way to cause an uprising. Anyone think that may be the intention?

69 points by sipofwater 1y ago

sipofwater 1y ago

Mirror: https://archive.ph/Rx7mV https://archive.ph/Rx7mV

FrankWilhoit 1y ago

[flagged]

tonetheman 1y ago

[dead]

unethical_ban 1y ago

>The secretary said after receiving data on SNAP recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.” >“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” What morally bankrupt, divisive leadership.

jleyank 1y ago
They’ll have a few weeks to up and die while the reduced, overworked government staff processes applications. They’ll certainly not slow walk the re-ups…

lokar 1y ago

Ugh, this again? I bet it's the same thing with all the "voter fraud" they find. They get two lists of people (list of votes/program enrollees and one of "dead" people, etc) that were not designed/cleaned for this, and do a very loose match and then declare just based on that it must be fraud. Are there some that are fraud, probably, a bit of that is just the cost of dealing with the public. Private companies get it just as much. But I'll bet almost all of it is either bad matching, poor record keeping, or honest mistakes.

jeremyjh 1y ago
Certainly there is some fraud; any system that gives out money will have fraud. But the reason they are doing this is simply to make people suffer.
- selectodude 1y ago
  Of course. They’re doing all this over $52 million dollars per month. It’s going to cost more than $52 million to have everybody reapply. They want these people to starve to death. It’s a death cult.

CodingJeebus 1y ago

For perspective, SNAP constitutes somewhere around 1.5% of the total Federal budget[0], and provides supplemental income for over 41M Americans[1]. So they're making everyone reapply because their disbursement headcount is off by less than 1% (180k vs 41M). It's hard not look at stuff like this and not see gross oppression. 0: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-government-spend-on-snap-every-year/country/united-states/ https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-gover... 1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-at-who-benefits-from-snap-state-by-state-fact-sheets#Alabama https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...

deadeye 1y ago
[flagged]
weird-eye-issue 1y ago
It is always a wonder to me when people downplay something that is "just" 1.5% of nearly $7 TRILLION
- jeffbee 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - weird-eye-issue 1y ago
    Who uses the caps lock key to only uppercase a single word?
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
  It's always a wonder to me when people downplay keeping others fed and healthy.
- CodingJeebus 1y ago
  You added the "just", not me. But to your point, there are much, much larger and controversial line items in the budget to argue about than feeding the poor. Preventing starvation is important to a functioning society, as widespread hunger has ended many a government throughout history.

ncr100 1y ago

I wonder if this is legal?

tkzed49 1y ago
I'm sure it will be ruled legal if it hurts the right people

Shank 1y ago

I have a friend with life circumstances that are complicated and she survives on SNAP. Every move like this is detrimental and jeopardizes the ability for her to stay alive. I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. I’m sure there is fraud, but there are many people with permanent disabilities and other things going on who don’t have the capacity to “just reapply” without significant effort. There is no need to do this when they can simply audit the usage.

baby_souffle 1y ago
> I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. The cruelty is the point; inflict trauma so the opinion of the government and the traumatized individual only worsens. It makes the "do we need this? Seems like nobody likes it and I bet my company could do it cheaper and better..." conversations a lot easier
jjav 1y ago
> I do not understand or fathom why this program is run in such a cruel, uncaring way. For the current administration, maximizing cruelty is the whole point and goal.

qgin 1y ago

Anyone who has ever worked on any sort of sales funnel knows: every time you ask someone to take an additional action, you lose people. Ask everybody to reapply, you'll end up with fewer people. You can say that's evidence of previous fraud, but it's largely just going to be people who didn't make it through the additional friction.

Difwif 1y ago
[removed]
- defrost 1y ago
  > If someone doesn't reapply for food stamps then they weren't that critical for their survival. For a good number it might be that they don't successfully reapply due to living on a knife edge that lacks the slack to jump through yet another hoop. The experience here in Australia is that raising welfare barriers hurts those that need welfare the most, the actual fraudsters have the resources to beat the system.
- chneu 1y ago
  My roommate was born disabled. He relies on SNAP and SSI disability. These extra steps can cause him weeks of stress, physical and mental. These extra steps cost him money he does not have. The stress can set him back physically for weeks. Reapplying, waiting on hold for half a day, going down to offices, etc are not easy for some folks. People fall through the cracks and die. This is called forced attrition. It's pretty common in the business world when companies don't want to fire people. Make it too difficult to bother, so folks stop bothering. Unfortunately this is a literal lifeline for millions of people, so it's more like make it too difficult to bother, so folks start dying.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  It doesn't pass the sniff test. If they "know" 186,000 people are deceased who are receiving benefits, then they can simply stop disbursements to those accounts. It doesn't require any action from those who are alive.
- 1y ago

ethin 1y ago

This is utterly disgusting. It took me 6 months to actually fully apply to SNAP (and I count the time it took for me to actually get a card). I seriously can't imagine this is legal, but if it somehow is ruled to be so, I can't imagine the idiots doing this actually have a plan for processing the millions and millions of applications. This is the same government who thought putting a bunch of teenagers in charge of making the government more "efficient" was a smart idea, so I imagine this will go just as badly, if not worse.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
Most functional states / local county offices have emergency benefits issuance processes that offer same-day service. I'm not sure but I don't think anyone gets SNAP directly, every state has an EBT-based "food stamps" program.

tastyface 1y ago

The Republican government protects pedophiles while starving and abusing the poor. What will it take to wake people up? These people *despise* anyone who's not part of their sick little cabal.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

For context, state-administered food programs paid for by SNAP already treat recipients like criminals with extensive salary, income, assets, and life situation reporting and verification every 6 months to 12 months max. It comes across as just yet another way look down on poor people, waste their time, and spend more money on duplicated means testing already costing significantly more than whatever hunting down every marginal unqualified case hoped to save like "finding" the "welfare queen" or "voting fraud" bogeyman that doesn't exist to demonize one group or another. UBI would probably be a whole lot cheaper than micromanaging what people can and can't buy while not treating the most desperate people with unkind, perpetual suspicion. The truth is this is yet another rug pull surprise to screw over poor people. Not just health insurance subsidy revocations or Medicaid cuts, because some people just aren't satisfied with trillions or all the power.

cindyllm 1y ago
[dead]

tsoukase 1y ago

I have some things to note as a non-US: 1) 42 million people underfed in the richest nation in the world is worrisome 2) killing one person is headlines, killing millions is statistics. Today, replace killing with starving 3) people reached at the state to need SNAP because of other incidents (health issues, loss of job, bankruptcy) which are much more expensive to prevented 4) saying to millions just to reapply seems more like social bulling to bring cheels to the masses than an effective fraud measure

morkalork 11mo ago
Also from the outside looking in here: those numbers appear mind boggling. More than 1 in 10 people are on the edge of survival? That's many times more than the mythical 3% who toppled British rule in the USA.

IAmGraydon 1y ago

Starving the poor has historically been a very effective way to cause an uprising. Anyone think that may be the intention?