Golden Fleece Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rep. French Hill (AR-02) named the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as the latest recipient of his Golden Fleece Award for their poor oversight of states’ administration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that have led to a second straight year of record high improper payments made through the program.

Rep. Hill said, “SNAP is the nation’s largest federally funded nutrition assistance program, providing $107 billion in benefits last year. The recent annual report that more than $10 billion of those funds were estimated to have been administered improperly is just plain outrageous. While each state administers those funds individually, USDA is ultimately the agency responsible for oversight of this program and ensuring its integrity. SNAP improper payment rates had been on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, but back-to-back years of record-setting improper payments erode the American people’s trust in the federal government and its management of their tax dollars. At a time of unsustainable annual deficits, USDA must take more rigorous action to protect the integrity of SNAP and bring down this mismanagement of taxpayer funds."

In a letter to USDA Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, Rep. Hill writes:

I write today to inform you that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the most recent recipient of my Golden Fleece Award. I am awarding this to USDA for your department’s continued poor oversight of states’ administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that has led to record highs in the reported percentage and amount of improper payments for the second straight year.

SNAP is a federal program that was originally established in 1939 and made permanent in 1964, known originally as the Food Stamp Program. The largest federally funded nutrition assistance program, SNAP is intended to support low-income individuals and families obtain a more nutritious diet by supplementing their income with benefits to purchase food. State agencies are responsible for determining individual and household eligibility, administrating benefits, and monitoring the program within their states while the federal government funds the full cost of SNAP benefits. At the federal level, USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is responsible for overseeing SNAP, including reviewing states’ data and administration to ensure that quality control requirements are met in accordance with program requirements; FNS is also responsible for reporting required improper payment information to the Office of Management and Budget.

Improper payments include both overpayments and underpayments and are benefit distributions that either should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount. To develop the national SNAP improper payment estimate, states first develop a sample size of 50,000 household cases and an estimation methodology before FNS reviews these plans and a sub-sample of 25,000 cases to ensure the accuracy of states’ data and quality control. As required under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), agencies must, among other obligations, report improper payment estimates of less than 10 percent to remain in compliance; agencies not in compliance must take corrective actions and present an action plan to Congress. For SNAP, FNS requires states with improper payment rates above the threshold to identify the root causes and develop a corrective action plan for FNS review, approval, monitoring, and proper implementation.

In June 2024, FNS reported that SNAP provided an estimated $10.5 billion (or 11.7 percent of non-disaster benefit outlays) of improper benefits for fiscal year 2023. This year’s data demonstrates an increase on the estimated level of improper payments from last year for fiscal year 2022 that set a record of $8.8 billion (or 11.5 percent) at the time. Because of the option for states to suspend certain quality control requirements as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no available data for 2020 and 2021.

Last year, USDA provided $90.1 billion in outlays not including disaster benefits through SNAP and approximately $107 billion in total SNAP benefits to about 42 million people across the country. Since USDA’s improper payment estimate for SNAP exceeded the 10 percent threshold, USDA is currently not in compliance with PIIA. This is the result of 28 of 53 SNAP administrators (all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and two territories) exceeding 10 percent improper payment rate. According to USDA reported information for fiscal year 2023, states mainly made improper payments because they did not verify recipients’ eligibility for the benefits, including their citizenship, education, employment, finances, household size, identity, and residency. Although USDA is implementing the Keys to Payment Accuracy, a guidance document that provides best practices to states on how to improve payment accuracy, and provides guidance, training, technical assistance, and tools to help states analyze the root causes of improper payments, FNS officials told GAO they do not plan for any significant changes or have a timeline for full implementation of the Keys to Payment Accuracy.

More than $10 billion in improper payments is simply unacceptable. While states administer SNAP, USDA is ultimately the supervisor of this program and responsible for ensuring the program’s integrity through their oversight of states. Before the pandemic, SNAP improper payment rates sat between 3 and 4 percent for many years. In the years leading up to 2020, the improper payment rate was trending in the wrong direction, rising to as a high as 7.36 percent in 2019 – a rate that is still too high but pales in comparison to the numbers we have seen the past two years. We are well enough removed from the COVID-19 pandemic that it cannot be the only explanation for such skyrocketing error rates. Your agency must continue to take additional action to bring down this mismanagement of important taxpayer funds to protect the integrity of SNAP and ensure Departmental compliance with the PIIA.

I am committed to ensuring effective fiscal practices at our Nation’s federal agencies. Should you require any additional authority from Congress to address these concerns, I urge you to notify us as soon as possible. I would also welcome any technical assistance you could provide to Congress to correct statutory issues that may have contributed to this problem. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to working with you to address this important issue.