Lawmakers in 2024 let lapse the authority for states to reimburse food stamp recipients who lost their benefits to fraud. Several lawmakers want to reverse course.
In the two years the Agriculture Department had the reimbursement authority, it identified 1.9 million fraudulent transactions using stolen Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Nearly 679,000 households were impacted, and $322.5 million in benefits were reimbursed the second quarter of fiscal 2023 through the first quarter of fiscal 2025, according to the USDA.
But the victims now have no available options to reclaim the benefit because the USDA’s SNAP reimbursement program expired after Dec. 20, 2024.
