>“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?”
What morally bankrupt, divisive leadership.
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.
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-gover...
1: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/a-closer-look-...
For example, the 40 billion dollar bailout of the Argentine economy.
Yes we should prevent starvation but the program does need some reform. Far too much of it is spent on junk food and soft drinks. Something like 23% of SNAP is spent on junk food.
Restricting SNAP purchases to be more aligned with health would very likely save lives.
Sounds reasonable in theory but has little basis in our current political reality.
By your own argument 75% of SNAP is spent on normal food, mostly by people who need it
Or even better we could give some more money to Argentina.
[0] https://www.cbpp.org/blog/snap-food-assistance-is-a-sound-in...
There are much bigger wastes of money. Tax cuts for billionaires for example. Even SNAP itself is effectively welfare for billionaires - it means they don't have to pay a fair wage.
It seems the biggest fraud and waste here is in the administration.
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
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.
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.
On more than one occasion I've been the primary decision maker for a technology choice that was going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more per year.
For reasons that aren't relevant here, didn't have a ton of time to do the evaluation... extreme prejudice was exercised against anything that didn't have a 'download now and get started button'.
Even if I wanted to jump on a sales call, I didn't have 2 and 1/2 days to wait for you to get back to me.
Maybe a sales funnel is the right tool for certain industries but when your primary user is technical, don't make them jump on a phone call. Get out of their way and make sure the documentation is good. If they like what they see and they have questions, they will chase you down. That is when you should do the pitch call...
Even my ADHD often made me incapable of doing basic things for stuff I cared about. I can't imagine the struggle for people with more severe live conditions. Same goes for you, apparently.
sipofwater•1h ago