Posted on 05/26/2017 10:44:10 AM PDT by spintreebob
More than half of food stamp recipients in 21 Georgia counties have been dropped from the program after the state instituted work requirements.
State figures released this week revealed that 11,779 people considered able-bodied without children were required to find work by April 1 to continue receiving food stamps, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Sixty-two percent were dropped after the deadline, whittling the number of recipients to 4,528.
State officials began enforcing the work mandate in 2016, and plan to expand work requirements to all 159 counties by 2019.
About 1.6 million Georgia residents use food stamps, which are funded with federal dollars managed by the state Department of Family and Children Services. The number of food stamp recipients deemed able-bodied and without children in Georgia has dropped from 111,000 to 89,500 in a year, a drop that state officials believe is attributed to a statewide review of the population.
Reactions to the expansion of work requirements largely divide on political lines. Conservatives, nationally, have pushed for more welfare-to-work initiatives after the Great Recession put the federal mandate on hold.
Benita Dodd, the vice president of the fiscally conservative Georgia Public Policy Foundation, said the work mandate pushes people into jobs.
"It does show that if you give people an incentive to help themselves, they can become productive citizens," Dodd said.
Progressives have criticized the policy as cruel for targeting access to food.
Melissa Johnson, a senior policy analyst for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, says food stamps are "a meager benefit" as is, at about $129 a month in Georgia, and said time limits will inflict more harm on the assistance-seeking population.
The state also has drawn criticism for improperly deeming those with physical and mental limitation as able-bodied.
The state first implemented the work requirements in Cobb, Gwinnett and Hall counties, giving recipients three months' notice. State officials later acknowledged that hundreds of people in the three counties who were classified as able-bodied were actually unable to work. Several had already lost their food stamps.
DCFS spokeswoman Mary Beth Lukich said the department, which has a $505,706 contract with Goodwill of North Georgia for employment assistance services, has offered help with job search and training to affected recipients.
"The agency has many services to offer (them), but many have chosen not to respond to multiple notices," Lukich said.
Improvements to the program could be made. But it seems to be working quite well.
Give the Left a choice between Welfare in a Stagnant economy or Work in a growing economy.
We take the votes of voters who believe in work. Let the Left take what's left.
So 62% of childless, able bodied recipients were not working?
129 bucks? A month? Why would anyone bother?
What happens when states go hunting for Medicaid fraud
Within about a year, Illinois had canceled benefits for nearly 150,000 people whose eligibility could not be verified — and saved an estimated $70 million.
overpayments and underpayments in all assistance programs cost federal and state governments about $136.7 billion in 2015, out of about $2.8 trillion spent in assistance overall.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/happens-states-go-hunting-medicaid-fraud/
It's not 62% of the 1.6 million on food stamps, but, rather 62% of 11,779.
Notice the number of people who made no attempt to keep their Foodstamps.
Fraud.
In other news, public health officials report a 62% reduction in obesity among the poor.
If you’re buying real food, like eggs, chicken, vegetables, etc., $129 buys a lot. If you’re buying soda, sugary cold cereals, cake - garbage “food”, $129 doesn’t buy much.
Emails And Robocalls Promoting Medicaid Enrollment
Postcards, robocalls and other low-tech outreach tools can be as effective as personalized enrollment assistance at encouraging eligible people to sign up for Medicaid, a new study found
Enrollment was significantly higher — 41 percent — among those who received extra outreach efforts.
http://khn.org/news/youve-got-mail-emails-and-robocalls-hit-home-in-promoting-medicaid-enrollment/
Some of them will move to places like California.
One thing that some Counties did in the run-up to the April 1st deadline, too, was to investigate and CHARGE people who were scamming the system.
Some of the rural southeastern Counties brought in extra Judges to handle the case load. If I recall one had something like 300 people charged in one small, rural county. May not sound like a lot, but with a total population around 15,000 it put a serious fear into anyone thinking of scamming the EBT system.
It’s just one of many benefits. It’s the ol’ “multiple streams of income” thing.
There was an article a while back about a young man who showed how he and his wife were able to earn over $70k in government handouts a year. One key, as I remember is, is that he had to claim his residence as his parents house while his wife claimed a different one. It was surprisingly simple, though.
Wow! When I worked in food stamps in 1981 it was $175 for 1 person with $0 income in California.
120 bucks buys, “A lot” at the grocery store? Good grief.
I can eat quite well on $32 a week, than you. That’s without the garden and hunting either.
I’ve been wondering why McDonald’s has gotten so expensive over the last ten years. It’s plan to see that they would go out of business if the U.S. government stopped subsidizing their customers.
Looks like the state saves $1,519,491.00.
Now that the stigma of being on welfare is gone, expect some very, very bright people to start finding new and creative ways make a killing off of the government.
Lots of unemployed PhDs out there.
I would, in a heartbeat. I would see it as getting my money back.
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