TheWashingtonTimes: Americans spend $80 billion each year financing food stamps for the poor, but the country has no idea where or how the money is spent.
Food stamps can be spent on goods ranging from candy to steak and are accepted at retailers from gas stations that primarily sell potato chips to fried-chicken restaurants. And as the amount spent on food stamps has more than doubled in recent years, the amount of food stamps laundered into cash has increased dramatically, government statistics show.
But the government won’t say which stores are doing the most business in food stamps, and even it doesn’t know what kinds of food those taxpayer dollars buy.
Coinciding with lobbying by convenience stores, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program in conjunction with states, contends that disclosing how much each store authorized to accept benefits, known as the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), receives in taxpayer funds would amount to revealing trade secrets.
Trade secrets? Uh huh...how 'bout the federal government just does't want the taxpayers funding this fraudulence to know just how much the program is being abused by the supposed unfortunate using food stamps to purchase anything from non-nutritional fast food or sodas to the luxuries of filet mignon & other choice cuts, and anything in between (including stocking up on the holidays!). In some cases, although illegal, numerous convenient stores have been cited for accepting food stamps towards the purchase of cigarettes, booze and even gas! How does the allowance of this kind of abuse assist those who actually need it?
As the House debates the once-every-five-years farm bill, the majority of which goes to food stamps, there is a renewed and fervent call from a broad spectrum of camps that the information — some of the most high-dollar, frequently requested and closely held secrets of the government — be set free.
Yep...public disclosure. The taxpayers should at least be able to know, especially when it can't even count on Congress to reform the program anytime soon.
