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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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“Painless”
Administrative Ways For States With Budget
Shortfalls to Preserve or
Increase Medicaid and
S-CHIP Program Funding
Section H
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