For sixty years, the food stamp program has operated under an arrangement no family and no business would ever accept: one level of government runs the program, and another level of government pays for it. States sign people up, calculate benefits, and process the paperwork while federal taxpayers cover the bill. When the people writing the checks and the people doing the work are in different buildings, nobody watches the register.
The results are exactly what you’d expect. In fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent roughly $100 billion on SNAP, and at least $10.5 billion of it was lost to improper payments, according to the Government Accountability Office. That’s at least one dollar out of every nine going out the door in the wrong amount, to the wrong people, or both. Year after year, the error rates barely move because for the states responsible for them, errors are free.
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