Stopping Needless Additional Performance Bonuses (SNAP) Act of 2013, H.R. 1182

This post Stopping Needless Additional Performance Bonuses (SNAP) Act of 2013, H.R. 1182 originally appeared on Truth About Bills

The Bill: H.R. 1182, the Stopping Needless Additional Performance Bonuses (SNAP) Act of 2013

Annualized Savings: $48 million (first-year savings)

The Department of Agriculture’s food stamp program, which is now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), provides food purchasing assistance to low- and no-income individuals and families. Federal funds are sent to state welfare agencies, who distribute the money to people in the form of checks, vouchers, or debit cards. Since its creation in 1939, the system has experienced problems. Ineligible people apply for and get credits, eligible people may get more than their monthly allotment, and changes in food assistance resulted in eligible people becoming ineligible. In the 2002 Farm Bill, lawmakers instituted a performance bonus system to reward states with low error rates in their SNAP sign ups. The lower the state’s error rate, the larger the bonus payment that state recieves from Washington, D.C.

In the current Congress, Congressman Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) has introduced H.R. 1182 to eliminate the SNAP performance bonuses. According to Rep. DesJarlais, the bonuses do not correct the errors in SNAP systems but incentivizes states to sign up more individuals (thereby growing the pool of recipients and decreasing the error rate). With the economic downturn, he cited in 2012 that “[t]here is no need to pay states for increasing the number of food stamp recipients they enroll in the program.”

According to current law, SNAP performance bonuses are fixed at $48 million per year. NTUF assumes eliminating these bonuses would result in as much savings to taxpayers. At least 13 states and two territories received bonuses in 2011.

This article originally appeared in the National Taxpayers Union Foundation’s Taxpayer’s Tab weekly newsletter, The Taxpayer’s Tab, on June 20, 2013. The Foundation’s BillTally project scores the potential spending of every introduced bill in Congress.

This post Stopping Needless Additional Performance Bonuses (SNAP) Act of 2013, H.R. 1182 originally appeared on Truth About Bills