Food Assistance

Hundreds of millions of dollars in food stamp benefits are being paid annually to persons who should not receive benefits or who receive more benefits than they should. Overpayments have increased in recent years to the point that in fiscal year 1993, more than eight percent of the $22 billion in benefits was inappropriately issued. Most of the errors were due to inaccurate information provided by benefit recipients to state caseworkers. The Agriculture Department's (USDA) Food and Consumer Service and many states have initiatives under way to reduce benefit overpayments. Some states have been so successful in reducing overpayments that they have qualified for additional food stamp funding from USDA. Although many factors have contributed to states' success in reducing overpayments, the single most critical factor seems to be aggressive pursuit of the error rate problem by food stamp program managers. USDA has also worked with states to reduce error rates by granting states waivers to a number of program regulations that tend to increase the number of errors.