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Monday, March 17, 2014

States use loophole to keep using heating-aid program to qualify people for food stamps

One of the major points that delayed the Farm Bill was reduction of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, which increased by 2.2 percent in 2013. In the end, the bill cut the program by $8.6 billion over the next 10 years, but states are finding a way around the cuts through a loophole that allows them to raise state utility assistance to low-income families, making them eligible for SNAP, Pam Fessler reports for NPR.

SNAP cuts in the Farm Bill had to do "heat and eat," the nickname for a program that allowed 16 "participating states to give low-income households as little as $1 a year in home heating aid so they'd qualify for more food stamps," Fessler writes. Last month Congress raised the amount of utility assistance required to qualify for food stamps to $20, thinking that many states would stop using the program, cutting off food stamp benefits of an average of $90 per month to 850,000 people, which would lead to the expected $8.6 billion in cuts.

"Six states — Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Oregon and Montana — have already declared that they will boost home energy benefits to avoid the food stamp cuts. Two other participants — Vermont and Washington, D.C. — are actively working to do the same thing," Fessler writes. Other states using "heat and eat" are California, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

That's not sitting well with some members of Congress. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters, "Since the passage of the Farm Bill, states have found ways to cheat, once again, on signing up people for food stamps. And so I would hope that the House would act to try to stop this cheating and this fraud from continuing." (Read more)

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