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By Aliss Higham
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Vivek Ramaswamy has indicated he will eliminate waste from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
SNAP benefits are administered to low- and no-income families across the U.S. to help them pay for essential groceries. The funds are provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the program is run at state level.
Ramaswamy, along with billionaire Tesla and Space X owner Elon Musk, will head up a new advisory body, the Department for Government Efficiency, or DOGE, when Trump comes into office in January 2025. The unofficial government department will be responsible for advising on streamlining costs and slashing regulations.
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Ramaswamy wrote on X that $1 billion is "wasted *every month* on ineligible SNAP (food stamp) benefits" due to overpayments and fraudsters preying on beneficiaries.
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"Overpayments occur when states allow recipients to continue receiving benefits despite incomes that should disqualify them," he continued. "Other times, fraudsters collect benefits from multiple states due to lack of coordination. Eliminating waste & fraud in SNAP would save billions annually. This isn't (or at least shouldn't be) a partisan point."
SNAP has been subject to widespread fraud in recent years. Benefits are administered to recipients through electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which are loaded with money every month to use in participating stores and online. Like regular debit or credit cards, they are subject to scams such as cloning, phishing or skimming.
There have been more than 810,000 fraud cases reported to the USDA since the second quarter of 2023. The total value of replaced stolen benefits in the same period is $150,646,972.
The national rate of overpayments for the 2023 fiscal year was 10.03, while 1.64 percent were underpaid. This varies considerably between states however, with payment error rates as high as 60.37 percent in Alaska and as low as 3.27 percent in South Dakota.
At the time, the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service demanded "urgent state actions" to fix the problem.
"Payment errors are largely due to unintentional mistakes, either by the state agency or the household, that affect the accurate determination of eligibility or benefit amounts," the government agency said in June 2024, while stressing that penalties will be administered for non-compliance.
Newsweek has contacted the USDA for comment on Ramaswamy's post via email outside of a regular working hours.
Elsewhere, Ramaswamy has also indicated that DOGE may look for opportunities to cut waste and fraud within Social Security and Medicare. However, he said large widespread cuts are unlikely as it is "a policy decision that belongs to the voters" and their representatives in Congress.
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