Most people when they think of food stamps think of one of three things. That being fraud, poor people, or poor people defrauding the government. However this program has some very deep and interesting tentacles. Think about this for a moment. Over $14,000,000,000.00 worth of food sold at Wal-Mart annually is purchased with food stamps. You don’t think Wal-Mart has something to lose in this reform? Then we have to talk about the administrators of the EBT cards who pushed through a provision in the school lunch bill signed by Obama that all food and welfare “entitlements” shall be done by EBT card by October 1, 2020. The three companies who have the lion’s share of this electronic market are JPMorgan Chase, Xerox, and eFunds which is a subsidiary of Fidelity National Information Systems.
Just how lucrative JP Morgan’s EBT state contracts are is hard to say, because total national data on EBT contracts are not reported. But thanks to a combination of public-records requests and contracts that are available online, here’s what we do know: 18 of the 24 states JP Morgan handles have been contracted to pay the bank up to $560,492,596.02 since 2004. Since 2007, Florida has been contracted to pay JP Morgan $90,351,202.22. Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112,541,823.27. New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126,394,917. Hardly chump change by any stretch of the imagination.
Which leads me to my ultimate point. There are many “players” in this game and not all of them that have a significant amount to lose are the poor.
You’ve given an excellent dissertation on WHY Trump does not want lobbyists in his administration.