Illinois rewarded for misspending only $52 million on food stamps

Well on the bright side, Illinois seems to be an 'efficient' manager of the Food Stamp program.

Their 'mistakes' only amounted to $50 million give or take.

Illinois' 'mistake rate' is less than 2% of the total money handled.

Because of their 'efficiency', the Feds are giving them a $4 million 'bonus' so to speak

I wonder just WHO Gets the 'mistake' overflow ?

It seems that the 'corruption factor' is built in.

Makes it all easier I guess.

Illinois might be just a good 'Graft' manager.

Since Illinois has seen an explosion in the number of people receiving food stamps, even a slight error costs taxpayers millions.

In this instance, a mistake rate of less than 2 percent means $50 million is misspent.

That’s the hard truth behind the press release lauding Illinois for having a 98.3 percent accuracy rate for its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. ......................

.......
Illinois is being awarded $4 million by the USDA as recognition of it 98 percent accuracy rate. Smith said she doesn’t know how Illinois will spend that money.

Illinois rewarded for misspending only $52 million on food stamps


Rewards for Failure always create more Excuses for Failure

How did they misspend it? Did they accidentally give each person an extra dollar or two each month for the last year? Or did just a few people get like hundreds of extra dollars? Or did they accidentally give food stamps to a bunch of people who didn't legally qualify? Did they forget to cut some people off at the end of their limitedd time they were supposed to be receiving food stamps?

98% isn't bad I guess... $52 million is a lot, but still when you're dealing with probably at least a million people in that state on food stamps, little mistakes can add up, I guess.... Maybe they give all their friends and family tins of free food stamps and just chalk it up as "accounting errors"??? Imagine having an unlimited food card... You could obviously use that to make money. Maybe something like that is going on? Someone bought $52 million in steaks and sold them to his cousins restaurant for $20 million, but the steaks didn't cost him a thing since he just used state issued food stamps to pay for them set up with fake accounts. So a $32 million dollar loss doesn't matter. It's still $20 million in HIS pocket. And his cousin gets half price steaks.

Is this food stamp process ever audited to make sure there are not fake accounts set up? One way to detect it would be if someone spent all of their food stamps for the whole year on a whole bunch of just a few items. These transactions are obviously kept on a computer somewhere, so a program could be designed to sniff out any odd purchase details. Which could then be further investigated by a human.

I know $52 million in steaks is a lot, but I was just using that as an example. But my guess would be they buy stuff from sams club or a butcher that could be used in a restaurant. If they are "skimming" food stamps off the top.

There could be several reasons why my idea is rediculous, but that's all it is, an idea. Besides, nothing surprises me anymore...

Does this even make sense?

They have a 98% accuracy but they still lost that 2%. So reward them with more money after they lost $52 million?

What happened to fiscal responsibilities?