In the segment above it is alleged that:
Food stamp fraud is at an all-time high, with cases this year including a state lawmaker and even a millionaire.
According to the USDA, $70 million of taxpayer money was wasted in 2016 due to food stamp fraud.
On “Fox & Friends” Tuesday, Abby Huntsman discussed the issue with New York City Councilman Joe Borelli and 2008 Clinton campaign adviser Jehmu Greene.
“The SNAP program…has been ripe with problems almost since its inception,” said Borelli, who argued that the program’s costs are out of control.
Borelli mentioned a House Committee on Agriculture report that talks about a number of ways to determine new criteria for people to qualify for food stamps.
Greene noted that 45 percent of food stamp recipients are under the age of 18 and another nine percent are over the age of 60, meaning the program is responsible for keeping these young and elderly people out of poverty.
She also said the program helps the local economy, with $9 being pumped back into the community for every $5 in food stamps spent.
“I think there are going to be bad apples in any program, so how do you weed those out? That should be the focus,” Greene said.
Retracting the story Fox and Friends said:
“We reported that back in 2016 $70 million were wasted on food stamp fraud,” Fox News contributor Abby Huntsman said. “That was actually incorrect. The latest information from 2009 to 2011 shows the fraud at 1.3 percent, which is approximately $853 million for each of those three years. Nationally food stamp trafficking is on the decline. So sorry about that mistake.”
There are two aspects to this story that are almost too strange to believe. The first is the cruel logic of arguing that a program which feeds millions of people who might otherwise go hungry should be cut because less than 1 percent of its budget is used fraudulently. After all, food stamps cost $70.8 billion in the 2016 fiscal year, so $70 million would be a remarkably low figure.