Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in an interview on Nov. 13 that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will undergo a fundamental overhaul, requiring all participants to reapply for benefits, citing widespread fraud uncovered by recent federal reviews.
Rollins revealed that new data from 29 primarily Republican-led states exposed significant irregularities in SNAP. She reported that 186,000 deceased individuals are still receiving benefits, and that 500,000 people are receiving duplicate SNAP payments.
“But here’s the really stunning thing: This is just data from those 29 mostly red states. Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she said on Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight.”
Rollins said the findings from the data are the beginning of a fundamental overhaul of the SNAP program that will require every recipient to reapply for their benefits.
The goal is to make sure that everyone who’s “taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it,” she said.
The SNAP program entered the national spotlight during the recent government shutdown, and concerns grew over whether millions of recipients would receive their November benefits. Following the end of the shutdown on Nov. 12, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) instructed states to distribute full November allotments.
The law also narrows exemptions so that only parents with children aged 13 or younger are excused from the work rule, while previous exemptions for homeless individuals, veterans, and former foster youth up to age 24 are eliminated.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), these changes are projected to reduce the average monthly number of food stamp recipients by 2.4 million through 2034.
In addition, the bill eliminates eligibility exceptions for noncitizens and restricts SNAP benefits to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents only. The CBO estimates that this adjustment will result in about 90,000 individuals being rendered ineligible for benefits each month.
According to Rollins, 29 states provided their data, while 21 Democrat-led states refused, and two states sued the department for requesting the information.
“In just the states that cooperated, we’ve already uncovered massive fraud,” Rollins wrote, adding that “the Democrat Party has turned its back on working Americans and built its entire strategy around protecting illegal aliens. They know if the handouts stop, those illegals will go back home, and Democrats will lose 20+ seats after the next census.”
“There’s a new sheriff in town,” Rollins wrote. “[President Trump] will not tolerate waste, fraud, or abuse while hardworking Americans go hungry.”