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States get a 50% match from
the Agriculture Department for administrative and
eligibility determination costs for food stamps—even though food stamps
themselves
are 100% federally-funded. Until recently, to get food stamps, aged and
disabled SSI
applicants and recipients had to file burdensome separate
applications for food stamps
at welfare offices---something few have the energy or resources to do,
particularly
after undergoing the exhaustive, traumatic SSI application gauntlet. So only
about
half of disabled SSI recipients get food stamps and even fewer aged ones
do.
Yet states bear half the multi-million dollar costs of operating their own
food stamp
eligibility bureaucracies ---which largely and unnecessarily duplicate the
eligibility
processing work done anyway by SSA for SSI applicants and recipients.
In recent years, the
Agriculture Department and the Social Security Administration
have developed Combined Application Programs (CAPs) to merge, or at least
better
coordinate, SSI and food stamp eligibility processing, aiming toward the
ideal of “one
stop shopping”. The very best version of these CAPs---which now operate in
MS, NY,
SC, TX and VA; which will start shortly in FL, MA and PA; and which are
being planned
in Al, AZ, AR, CT, ID, IL, KS, KY, LA, MD, NJ, NC, OK, SD, UT and
WI---allow both
new SSI applicants and ongoing SSI recipients to be automatically processed
for, and
receive, food stamps based on their SSI eligibility processing, without the
need to apply
separately at welfare office oreven complete even short, supplementary
mailed-in
applications.
Most of these state
CAPS, however, fall short of the very best in streamlining; only South
Carolina, inmost aspects, and New York, in others, offer the most in
speeding reforms
and cost-savings with advanced electronic systems that most fully displace
cumbersome
and expensive in-person, paper application processing at welfare offices.
For details on
CAPs, see the report on Supplemental Security Income/Food Stamp Combined
Application Projects at
www.frac.org
.
States which set up more
advanced, streamlined, comprehensive, electronically-
sophisticated SSI/food stamps CAPs can thereby avoid almost all the
administrative
and eligibility determination costs for food stamps for aged and disabled
SSI recipients.
(Even a small state like South Carolina, when just beginning its fairly
advanced,
comprehensive electronically-sophisticated CAP, saved over half a million
dollars a
year in state administrative eligibility costs.) Since almost all of states’
remaining,
non-SSI-related food stamp eligibility costs are for those on TANF
(“welfare”,
formerly known as AFDC), for whom states piggy-back food stamp costs o
welfare
eligibility costs anyway, states could thereby eliminate much of their
administrative
food stamp eligibility expenses. See the discussion immediately below for
how this
reform can add significantly to state sales tax revenue. For more on
effective state
efforts to promote access to food stamps to the working poor, see the
General
Accounting Office report, Food Stamp Program: Steps Have Been Taken to
Increase
Participation of
Working Families, but Better Tracking of Efforts Is Needed. GAO-04-346,
March 5,
2004 at
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-346\
 Section I: Liberalizing Food Stamps for the Aged, Disabled and
Families at No State Cost
By Advocating for Higher State-set Standard
Utility Allowances That Fully Reflect Current,
Increased Utility
Costs---Which Can Also Raise State Sales Tax Revenue
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