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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAs SNAP funding lapsed, a top official called the program 'corrupt'
As the controversy over funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown dragged on in recent days, the top official in charge of the program pivoted to a new talking point, calling the program that some 42 million Americans rely on "corrupt."
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described SNAP at a recent press conference as "so bloated, so broken, so dysfunctional, so corrupt that it is astonishing when you dig in." The message came as headlines highlighted food banks warning of an impending crisis as money ran out over the weekend for SNAP recipients.
"We have found thousands and thousands of illegal use of the EBT card," Rollins said, referring to the electronic benefit transfer cards used by SNAP recipients. "We have been moving people off of SNAP. We've got almost 700,000 people, I think we've moved off just since the president took office. We've arrested about 118 people."
She added, "We found one guy in six different states getting a benefit. We found about 5,000 people that are dead who are still getting benefits."
People with experience analyzing SNAP and other safety net programs say such statistics need more detail and context about how they were calculated to be evaluated.
"We have real questions about how they've arrived at these numbers," said Nicole Schneidman, an attorney with the nonprofit, Protect Democracy. Schneidman represents SNAP recipients and hunger and privacy groups who sued over USDA's data demand to states.
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/04/nx-s1-5595920/snap-usda-rollins-fraud
Deja Vu.
Reagan pulled the exact same shit.
This time they want to kill us off for good.
Bozvotros
(950 posts)The whole fucking corrupt nest of Trump and his shit talking enablers rely on lying and on their racist base accepting each one without evidence.
Trueblue1968
(18,946 posts)BOSSHOG
(44,111 posts)Lie. Cheat. Steal. Name a football Stadium after a convicted felon. Just get up in the morning and plan to do ugliness to those who share your country. Just Be a Republican.
jls4561
(2,775 posts)AZJonnie
(2,250 posts)Well, presumably Brooke Rollins has a non-zero number of hands, and a non-zero number of assholes. We should start with these baseline facts in our gleaning the source of the statistics
Also, even if accurate, these numbers are impressively LOW given the scale of the program.
But the regime are masters at psychologically manipulating their low-information "base" (helps that they generally are assholes, just by nature). Just tell them someone, somewhere, is defrauding a government program, and they'll cheer for it to be destroyed entirely.
AZ8theist
(6,977 posts)Otherwise, you are just blowing smoke out of your ass.
We live in post-truth America.
The United States of Gaslighting.
unblock
(55,777 posts)patphil
(8,483 posts)The 5000 dead still receiving benefits is more of an accounting error than anything else. It speaks to the poor communication between agencies; something that is easily fixed.
Wiz Imp
(8,081 posts)You can bet they're looking at things the same way that Musk did with Social Security when he claimed so many dead people were receiving benefits. It's ridiculous. The person receiving benefits in 6 states is probably name John Smith. I'm sure they think any 2 recipients with the same name must be the same person. I don't doubt that a few dead people receive benefits each month because it can take a little time for the records to catch up with one another. I am sure there are not anywhere near 5000 dead people receiving benefits for any significant length of time.
paleotn
(21,155 posts)Simple case of show us the evidence or shut the fuck up.
unblock
(55,777 posts)illegal voting and and undocumented immigrants getting social security benefits.
The media covers that these people "have a problem with the truth", yet continually give them a huge microphone and tell us we need to know everything they say, even though most of us know they lie and exaggerate about everything.
However poor communication between agencies since Chump moved in has exploded into the stratosphere.
Most federal workers are just trying to stay alive.
ProfessorGAC
(75,188 posts)I don't, so the fractions are even smaller.
I especially don't believe the 5,000 dead people collecting benefits.
It's just so easy to make up stuff like that, just like in '20 when they claimed to dead people voted & could produce zero evidence.
Hekate
(100,129 posts)
to all those kids with nutritional diseases of the late 20th and early 21st centuries obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, incipient heart disease. And lets not forget, old pandemic diseases that can cripple and kill
Imagine, while the billionaire and Evangelical classes preach self-sufficiency and how children whose parents are just too shiftless to feed them on 2 or 3 min wage jobs, should just drop out of grade school and what? Sleep under the cotton mill spinners? become chimney sweeps? go down in the coal mines where their daddy is coughing his lungs out? sell their little girl bodies? if too crippled to do any of this, be parked on a street corner be put with a bowl to beg ?
They said they wanted to throw us back to the mythical 1950s, but anyone whod ever studied history knew what they had in mind was not a 75 year redial, but much more like a 150 year redial.
Dont let them win this war. We were better than this.
Norrrm
(3,399 posts)jmowreader
(52,778 posts)They also found someone rolling up to the SNAP office in a new Cadillac, right?
orangecrush
(27,534 posts)I had hoped not to live through this again
crazylikafox
(2,896 posts)jmowreader
(52,778 posts)AllaN01Bear
(27,996 posts)bah humbug
JMCKUSICK
(4,575 posts)118 arrested out of 42,000,000 recipients would constitute .000281%
I think that works out to 28 people out of every 10.5 million.
Does the defense department have numbers that good?
Don't get me started on dollars
Cirsium
(3,141 posts)Brooke Rollins is a disgusting liar and a cruel monster.
mdbl
(7,736 posts)Like in Social Security.
JoseBalow
(8,906 posts)because a few assholes took an extra turn at the buffet?
It's such a bullshit talking point, but it perfectly represents the rotten pathology at the core of the Republican party.
orangecrush
(27,534 posts)With it he got the middle class to sign their own death warrant
dalton99a
(91,098 posts)just like the rest of the Trump criminal regime

orangecrush
(27,534 posts)No offense meant to real prostitutes who don't cause human suffering and are victims of exploitation.
Irish_Dem
(77,800 posts)johnnyfins
(3,235 posts)I had to use snap during the Pandemic, because NO JOB and also because MY TAXES PAY FOR SNAP. In my state, the verifications and paperwork were daunting.
You cant buy anything but unprepared groceries. It has to be food, or the card won't work.
Someone had snap benefits in 5 different states? HORSESHIT.
You know how they moved 700,000 people off of snap? They made the income requirements more strict. It wasnt fraud.
This admin is FRAUD.