According to a new report from the Department of Agriculture, federal regulations that require applicants to show up in person if they want food stamps may be outdated. The report showed that most states have been granted waivers from the requirements, allowing applicants to get approved for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over the phone. Citing the costs of forcing people to come down to the welfare office, administration officials think telephonic approval may be the way to go.
To see if that idea held water, the USDA conducted a short test in Oregon and Utah to see what happened when they eliminated the eligibility interview altogether. They found that while interviews expedited the approval process and make it more likely that applicants would report their earnings, they did not “necessarily improve approval or denial rates or accuracy of benefit payments.”
According to the report, SNAP may need to make the application process easier due to how many more Americans are currently in the program. Only 17 million people were receiving food stamps in 2000 as compared to 47 million recipients in 2014.
Of course, it didn’t occur to anyone at the Obama administration that perhaps they were confusing the cause with the effect. When you eliminate even the most basic obstacles standing between people and free food, why would it be a surprise when the enrollment swells? As always, liberals think that when their policies lead directly to a problem, the correct way to solve that problem is to double-down on the original policies. Imagine if people applied that logic to their personal lives. Hmm, I’ve been eating six doughnuts a day for the last month and I’ve gained 15 pounds. I know, I’ll eat twelve doughnuts a day for the next month and maybe I’ll lose weight.
As absurd as that example seems, it is exactly the kind of backwards thinking that Democrats have made their calling card. Of course, they’re not quite that stupid. They are perfectly happy to have more people on the food stamp logs. In fact, they are actively trying to get as many people to sign up for the SNAP program as they can. That’s why they want to increase the efficiency of the process. Not to reduce costs but to inflate the rolls until we have a full-blown crisis on our hands.
After all, once you have a third of the country eating out of the palm of your hand, what choice do they have but to vote for you the next time the elections come around?
