America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. COATS. Mr. President, this is now my 39th edition of ``Waste of the Week.'' For 39 weeks I have been back on the floor when the Senate has been in session to talk about unnecessary, fraudulent, wasted, abusive spending of taxpayer dollars.

We have run up quite a toll--more than I thought we would--but the more I dig into this and the more information we get from the agencies that are looking at how we spend taxpayers' dollars, the more alarmed I have been and the public should be and our colleagues should be over how these hard-earned tax dollars are spent in a wasted and abusive way or a fraudulent way. So I am going to keep doing this to alert my colleagues and alert the American people--in particular, people in my State--that there are ways we can better and more efficiently use their tax dollars or not require them in the first place.

This week I am focusing on documented abuse of the Department of Agriculture's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most Hoosiers and other Americans know this as the Food Stamp Program. The Food Stamp Program has had some ups and downs in terms of our support, and there has been a lot of bad publicity about the abuse of this program. I get many letters and contacts in my office describing standing in the grocery line and seeing someone use food stamps not for milk for their children or cereal or nutritious food but for junk food or tobacco or alcohol. The program is not supposed to be used for that kind of thing, but somehow we keep reading about potential misuse of what this program is intended to do.

Now, the SNAP program, as it is now called--Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, S-N-A-P, the SNAP program--exists to provide low- income individuals with their nutrition needs and food items. It is funded by the Federal Government, and it is administered by the States.

Let me begin by saying I am not here to do a critique of the program. That is a topic for a different discussion. I am here to talk about whether this program is being effectively run by the States and effectively funded by the Federal Government. What we have learned is that--no surprise--as with so many other Federal programs, there has been gaming and fraudulent use of the program. There clearly are people who don't qualify and are not eligible for receiving these food stamp vouchers but are nevertheless receiving them through this program.

The government has become modern with the digital age, and instead of food stamps they issue an electronic benefits transfer card. It is like a debit card that people carry in their wallet. Money is added to that card electronically and it can be used at grocery stores. People swipe it. Hopefully, it works better than Secretary Clinton's card worked at the subways of New York. Anyway, you can swipe this card, and it will deduct the amount you have, in terms of the cost of the food provided, and it is refreshed on a monthly basis.

In looking at the program, the General Accountability Office got some tips about the fact that a lot of replacement cards were being sent out. We all leave our license on the counter in the kitchen or our credit card and we wonder, ``Where is that credit card,'' and then we need a replacement. This happens. We understand that. So there is a replacement card program available through SNAP. You say you lost your card and they send you a new one. The problem is that GAO--the Government Accountability Office--learned from the program that a tremendous amount of replacement cards were going out to people-- sometimes over four. Then, they say: Wait a minute. Maybe we ought to look at this because this person has been asking for replacement cards on a regular basis. Are they really losing those cards or are they using them for other purposes?

So they set up a trial program. They looked at three States-- Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nebraska--and found that more than 7,500 households receiving these SNAP benefits had suspicious transactions and were using four or more EBT cards in a year during key times, such as when cards were credited with benefits, and all of a sudden the request came in, saying: I lost my card--and by the way this is the fifth time or sixth time or whatever.

In totaling all of this, the General Accountability Office said this accounted for more than $26 million of suspicious transactions. Now, that was just from the three States. These are sizable States-- Massachusetts, Michigan, and Nebraska--but they pale in comparison to say Florida, Texas, California, and New York. So if it was $26 million of suspicious transactions for just these three States that were looked into, imagine what it would be if they checked all 50 States.

So we did some calculations using the same proportion of SNAP households as those identified by GAO as affecting the whole country, and we came up with roughly $3.2 billion of waste over a 10-year period of time. That is not small change. A lot of people work awfully hard to accumulate the kind of money needed to total $3.2 billion and then only to see it wasted.

People said: Maybe these suspicious transactions were legitimate. So we did a quick search on Craig's List. Craig's List is this list you go into--I know all of the young pages understand this. We old people aren't necessarily up to speed on all of these new electronic transactions and processes and so forth. I got into it with the help of my young staff. We got into Craig's List and we found that what was being advertised--see, on Craig's List you put up something that others will want to buy, and it can be anything from a washing machine to a lawn mower, to a picture frame or whatever. We found some people advertising these SNAP cards, these EBT cards. For instance, a mechanic named Marco could--this was not Marco Rubio, by the way--a mechanic named Marco will accept EBT cards as payment for auto care, he said. In other words, if you have a problem with your car, come over to my shop. I will fix it for you, and instead of cash, you can give me EBT cards. So probably that is pretty tempting. How much to fix my automobile? Thirty-five bucks. I have an EBT card. It has $33.47 left on it. How about I pay you with that? He says: OK. I can take that in payment. Then they apply for a replacement card. That is probably one of the ways it adds up.

Another person advertised two Beyonce tickets. I haven't been to a Beyonce concert, but I actually know who she is. I actually realize, even at my age, that she is a star and everybody wants these tickets. So they advertised two tickets for $1,200 and said: We can accept EBT cards for payment. Somebody has to accumulate a lot of these cards to come up with a payment for two tickets to a Beyonce concert.

Another post on Craig's List reads: ``I have around $1,300 in food stamps and have no need for it at all.'' I will sell this card with $1,300 in credits if you will send me $300. I guess that raises questions about how these cards are being used, and these are just a few examples.

This kind of fraud obviously needs to be addressed. As all of the other 38 weeks of ``Waste of the Week'' I have put up here continues to accumulate, these cards obviously are not being used--all of them--for those who need it and for its intended purpose. It is clear that we ought to be adopting GAO's methodology of tracking both the number of recipients that receive more and more EBT cards at specific times of the year and those with suspicious transactions, and I think a lot of this abuse could be eliminated.

So what we are doing today is we are adding another $3.2 billion of waste, and we continue to raise the amounts. It is now $162 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse. This is going to continue as we alert the American people, inform my colleagues in the Senate and the Congress, and inform the administration that there are ways to better use, and hopefully not even have to request in the first place, the kind of tax dollars we are paying for a clearly dysfunctional Federal Government program.

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