By GEOFF MULVIHILL and DARLENE SUPERVILLE Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration warned on Tuesday that it will withhold money for administering SNAP food aid in most Democratic-controlled states starting next week unless those states provide information about people receiving the assistance.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that the action is looming because those states are refusing to provide data the department requested such as the names and immigration status of aid recipients. She said the cooperation is needed to root out fraud in the program. Democratic states have sued to block the requirement, saying they verify eligibility for SNAP beneficiaries and that they never share large swaths of sensitive program data with the federal government.
States and the federal government split the cost of running SNAP, with the federal government paying the full cost of benefits. After Rollins’ remarks, a USDA spokesperson later explained that the agency is targeting the administrative funds — not the benefits people receive.
Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia previously sued over the request for information, which was initially made in February. A San Francisco-based federal judge has barred the administration, at least for now, from collecting the information from those states.
The federal government last week sent the states a letter urging compliance, but the parties all agreed to give the states until Dec. 8 to respond.
“We have sent Democrat States yet another request for data, and if they fail to comply, they will be provided with formal warning that USDA will pull their administrative funds,” the USDA said in a statement Tuesday.
Federal law allows the USDA to withhold some of the money states receive for administering SNAP if there’s a pattern of noncompliance with certain federal regulations.
But “there’s never authority to withhold the SNAP benefits and, in this case, there’s also no authority to withhold the administrative funding,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University who has studied the food aid program for several decades.
Administration says data is needed to spot fraud
About 42 million lower-income Americans, or 1 in 8, rely on SNAP to help buy groceries. The average monthly benefit is about $190 per person, or a little over $6 a day.
Rollins has cited information provided by states that have complied, saying it shows that 186,000 deceased people are receiving SNAP benefits and that 500,000 are getting benefits more than once.
“We asked for all the states for the first time to turn over their data to the federal government to let the USDA partner with them to root out this fraud, to make sure that those who really need food stamps are getting them,” Rollins said, “but also to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected.”
Her office has not released detailed data, including on how much in benefits obtained by error or fraud are being used.
The USDA said Tuesday evening that 28 states and Guam have complied with the request for information. That list consists primarily of states with Republican governors, though North Carolina — which has a Democratic governor — also has complied.
Twenty-two states have sued to block the request.
Experts say that while there is certainly fraud in a $100 billion-a-year program, the far bigger problems are organized crime efforts to steal the benefit cards or get them in the name of made-up people — not wrongdoing by beneficiaries.
SNAP has been in the spotlight recently
U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat who is a co-sponsor of legislation to undo recent SNAP changes, said Rollins is trying to make changes without transparency — or without a role for Congress — and that she is mischaracterizing the program.
“Individuals who are just trying to buy food, those aren’t the ones who are gaming the system in the way that the administration is trying to portray,” Hayes said in an interview on Tuesday before Rollins announced her intention.
The impact of states losing administrative funds for SNAP isn’t clear. But some advocates have warned that other policies that would shift more administrative costs to states could be so costly that some could drop out of SNAP entirely rather than absorb the extra costs. States cannot tap the money used for benefits to cover administrative costs.
The program is not normally in the political spotlight, but it has been this year.
As part of Trump’s big tax and policy bill earlier in the year, work requirements are expanding to include people between the ages of 55 and 64, homeless people and others.
And amid the recent federal government shutdown, the administration planned not to fund the benefits for November. There was a back-and-forth in the courts about whether they could do so, but then the government reopened and benefits resumed before the final word.
In the meantime, some states scrambled to fund benefits on their own and most increased or accelerated money for food banks.
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Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey. Reporters Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Michael Hill in Albany, New York; Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; and Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.