Summary

Congress has expressed a strong desire in recent years to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the Food Stamp Program. Earlier GAO reports found that millions of dollars in food stamp overpayments in four states were caused by counting thousands of inmates and deceased individuals as household members and thousands of individuals as members of recipient households in more than one state during the same period. (See GAO/RCED-97-54, Mar. 1997, GAO/RCED-98-53, Feb. 1998, and GAO/RCED-98-228, Aug. 1998.) This report discusses individuals who were disqualified from the program for intentionally violating the program's rules but were included as household members during their disqualification period. GAO found that more than 3,000 disqualified individuals in the four states it reviewed were improperly counted as members in households that received food stamp benefits during 1997.

GAO noted that: (1) over 3,000 disqualified individuals in the four states GAO reviewed were improperly counted as members in households that received food stamp benefits during calendar year 1997; (2) while GAO cannot estimate the potential amount of overpayments received nationwide for individuals who participated while disqualified, the households in the four states GAO reviewed improperly collected about $500,000 in food stamp benefits; (3) the $500,000 in overpayments, while small in relation to the $5.6 billion in food stamps distributed to 6.4 million individuals in these four states, undermine USDA's accomplishments and ongoing efforts to ensure the program's integrity; (4) about 70 percent of the disqualified participation GAO identified was attributable to weaknesses in state processes for the timely removal of individuals from the food stamp rolls after they have been disqualified; (5) about 30 percent of the disqualified participation that GAO identified occurred because the states did not check USDA's national database of disqualified individuals to determine if household members had been disqualified by another state or because of delays in updating information in the database; (6) furthermore, USDA's database is incomplete and contains errors; therefore, even if state agencies check the database, they may not receive full and accurate disqualification information; (7) GAO could not estimate, however, the amount of additional disqualified participation attributable to this problem; and (8) USDA could help the states reduce disqualified participation by sharing best practices for imposing disqualifications promptly and requiring states to check its national database of disqualification information for applicants.