Steven Vaden, the deputy secretary of the USDA, spoke on Thursday, at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Conference. He focused on fraud.
While recognizing the important of the SNAP program, he said the system does not require proper income and asset evaluations for individuals on the program.
As Sec. Rollins had said, the USDA launched data collection and received information from 29 states.
He reviewed examples of fraud they uncovered. In one case, an individual received SNAP benefits in six different states. In a separate case, one individual had more than $50,000 on their Electronic Benefits Transfer, or EBT card.
It’s costing more than $9 billion a month for a program that has gone from feeding 17 million to 42 million in the four years of the Democrat Biden administration.
It would not have come to light were it not for the Democrat shutdown.
“[Taxpayers] especially have a right to rest assured that only those who truly need are benefitting from the program, because every dollar you give to someone who has a balance of more than $15,000 on their EBT card cannot go to someone who is truly in need,” Vaden said.
The USDA is also relocating about 2,600 staff members to offices across the country, including in North Carolina, Indiana, Utah, Colorado and Missouri. Vaden said the move is into buildings that taxpayers are already paying for.
“It definitely makes sense from the perspective of the taxpayer, and it’s moving our agencies closer to the communities we serve,” Vaden said.
