Food Stamps: Many States Fail To Remove Substantial Lottery Winners From Eligibility — Why It Matters for Future of Program
Written by
Josephine Nesbit
Edited by
Ashleigh Ray
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Earlier this month, someone in California bought the winning ticket for the $1.7 billion Powerball jackpot. But some lucky lottery winners are still able to collect food stamps, thanks to a combination of negligence and federally created loopholes, wrote Hayden Dublois, data and analytics director at the Foundation for Government Accountability, in a Fox News Digital article.
The FGA conducted a survey of data from thirteen states and found that since 2019, over 66,000 substantial lottery winners have continued collecting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. All winners collected winnings running from $4,250 and $2 million, amounts above the federal asset threshold to qualify for government assistance, noted Fox News.
“The food stamp program is a safety net meant to help the truly needy, not lottery winners or millionaires,” Dulois said. “All it would take is a simple database cross-check and asset test, but most states don’t do it.”
These 13 states have only removed about 400 lottery winners from SNAP, according to FGA. Why have so few been removed?
One reason is state ineptitude, said Dulois. Eight states perform data cross-checks and compare lottery winning records to food stamp records regularly, but most states don’t do this.
Another reason is that there’s a federal loophole. Dulois said that Congress has allowed some states to ignore the SNAP asset limit test under a policy known as “broad-based categorical eligibility.” States can automatically sign up someone for SNAP if they already receive government assistance.
And the program is expensive to run. Fox News reported that food stamp spending has doubled from $60 billion in 2019 to $120 billion last year. Today, roughly 12.% of the total U.S. population receives an average of $181.72 per person and $343.00 per household each month, according to the Pew Research Center.
Fox News pointed out that a handful of Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to close the SNAP loophole that allows lottery winners to stay enrolled. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, introduced a bill in September that could reduce spending by nearly $1 billion. The legislation would require all errors to be counted and state governments to stop giving out ineligible benefits, or they will have to eat some of the costs.
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