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| Economy |
| Food stamp costs jump 5% in August |
| 2023-11-25 |
| Would that be from the .5M 1st quarter immigrants? [JustTheNews] The cost of food stamps jumped 5.3% to $7.5 billion in August, the highest amount since March when federal pandemic assistance ended. The cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, had been decreasing. The federal SNAP program costs went from $11.01 billion in December 2022 to $7.14 billion as of July 2023 as states ended emergency benefits put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that the August data was preliminary, but the increase may be due to disaster benefits states offer. The number of people on food stamps nationally increased from 41.3 million in July to 41.8 million in August. A SNAP spokeswoman said in an email to The Center Square that there are three types of disaster benefits that could impact SNAP benefit amounts from month to month. SNAP gives out "early issuance" benefits that allows SNAP households to prepare for a natural disaster by receiving their benefits earlier than usual. SNAP also provides replacement benefits for regular food stamp recipients who have their food lost during a disaster. The food assistance program also may grant temporary benefits to people who suddenly need assistance due to a disaster. For example, the state of Michigan in August approved replacement food assistance for residents impacted by a storm that knocked out the power in a 10-county area in southeast Michigan. The amount of the replacement for food lost during the outage was equal to up to one month's food assistance benefits. The average person on food stamps nationally received $180 a month in August. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #7 that has been going on for along time |
| Posted by: Chris 2023-11-25 16:29 |
| #6 I recall an actual welfare fraud case in the Central Valley of California in the early 2010's that involved Middle Eastern immigrants who ran a remote Stop and Rob style store-front gas station. They did a huge food stamp volume business, with monthly reimbursements over 300 k in EBT/SNAP sales. When investigators actually raided the place most of the shelf stock and food-stuffs that were not Halal were past Best-By dates, often significantly, and no where near the quantities for the level of sales claimed. But most telling, was the pre-raid surveillance that revealed relatively low daily customer traffic, far too few to account for the sales/reimbursement volume. Later LE interviews had locals reporting that the shop owners would offer 40 cents on the dollar for the stamp account balances in cash. Turned out the entire set-up was fronted by Paki ex-pats with Hawala connections, and the US banking deposit safeguards for the volume of fraud were bypassed because the money went into Hawala channels and disappeared into the mists overseas I cannot imagine the systems is any less corrupt these days. |
| Posted by: NoMoreBS 2023-11-25 15:19 |
| #5 How will this impact the secondary swap market for street drugs? |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2023-11-25 14:24 |
| #4 Glad to hear this, my wife lost he job not long ago and she applied. Didn't even get the call when they were supposed to call and were denied. But of course we're white. |
| Posted by: Chris 2023-11-25 14:12 |
| #3 Nope. Inflation has gone down. Has to be wrong. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2023-11-25 14:08 |
| #2 The Talking Mop sez it's all a lie. Everything's fine |
| Posted by: Frank G 2023-11-25 13:53 |
| #1 Biden administration under fire after Pentagon requests $114 million for diversity, equity Sure. Why feed Americans. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-11-25 09:43 |