In a significant win for the Trump administration, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins revealed SNAP fraud data from 29 mostly red states, showing ~186,000 deceased recipients (initially reported as 5,000 in one month) and 500,000 getting duplicate benefits.
Continuing her stunning expose, she anticipates worse findings from blue states. Rollins hopes this will enable a program overhaul by requiring all beneficiaries to reapply and verify their need for taxpayer-funded aid.
While appearing on Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins stated that data from Democrat controlled states is “going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”
Offering a much-needed background for the data, she noted how “29 states, mostly the red states, responded with their data sets, February, March, April. … But here’s the most unbelievable news I have really, just over the last few days: That 5,000 dead people, that was just one month, the number is closer to 186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”
Continuing her courageous war against fraud, Rollins kept digging. “Now, that is what we’re really going to start clamping down on. Half a million are getting two. But here’s the really stunning thing: This is just data from those 29 mostly red states. Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data, what we’re going to find?” the official declared.
Concluding her comments, she gave a hopeful vision of the future. The Ag Secretary said, “It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it. And that’s the next step here.”
In earlier comments to NPR, Rollins noted that SNAP was “so bloated, so broken, so dysfunctional, so corrupt that it is astonishing when you dig in.” Explaining her reaction, she stated, “[W]e told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families.”
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Describing why many blue states have refused to cooperate, she kept going. “In just the states that cooperated, we’ve already uncovered massive fraud. The Democrat Party has turned its back on working Americans and built its entire strategy around protecting illegal aliens. They know if the handouts stop, those illegals will go back home, and Democrats will lose 20+ seats after the next census,” Rollins said.
Diving into the results, sht noted. “We have found thousands and thousands of illegal use of the EBT card. We have been moving people off of SNAP. We’ve got almost 700,000 people, I think we’ve moved off just since the president took office. We’ve arrested about 118 people. We found one guy in six different states getting a benefit. We found about 5,000 people that are dead who are still getting benefits.”