Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the Department of Agriculture has cut nearly 6 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the past year and a half, as part of an intensified push to root out fraud in the food stamp system.
Rollins made the claim during an appearance on “The Alex Marlow Show,” telling host Alex Marlow that enrollment has fallen from roughly 43 to 44 million people to “right over 35, 36 million.”
“We have now, Alex, moved almost 6 million people off of SNAP in just a year and a half,” Rollins said.
Asked what USDA is doing to identify fraud in federal assistance programs, Rollins pointed to SNAP as a prime example, noting that other officials across the administration have identified similar problems in housing, Medicaid, and Medicare programs.
A federally funded program with little oversight
Rollins argued that a core structural problem with SNAP is that it is “a fully federally funded program,” yet Washington “just hand[s] that money over to the states, and there’s no accountability.”
She said spending on the program rose 40 percent under the Biden administration, calling that increase “crazy” and noting that more people were added to the rolls during that period.
“There was no checking of whether, you know, they were working or trying to find a job,” Rollins said. “There was no checking on their means. There was no checking on whether they’re driving Lexuses or, you know, Range Rovers, which a lot of them are.”
Outreach to governors, red and blue
Rollins said she wrote to every governor in the country on her first day in office, framing the fraud crackdown as a bipartisan priority.
“The first day I walked in and sent a letter to every governor and said, ‘We’ve got to change this. This is not red or blue. We’ve got to work together and uncover,'” Rollins said.
She said all Republican governors signed on to the effort, and that some Democratic governors cooperated as well. “I had all the R, all the red states sign up, and actually a couple of the blue state governors have been great partners too,” she said.
Rollins added that taxpayers and families who genuinely rely on the program are being shortchanged by fraud. “You know, the American taxpayer just is owed better, as are the families that really need this program that is being stolen,” she said.
Findings so far
Rollins cited specific examples of fraud uncovered by USDA’s review, including “250,000 people that are using dead people’s social security numbers in one state alone,” as well as “hundreds of fancy cars” linked to names receiving SNAP benefits.
To carry out the work, Rollins said she redeployed the team that had previously been tasked with shrinking USDA’s workforce. “I took the Doge team, the Elon team that came into USDA to help us rightsize, and we did,” she said. “We shrunk USDA by 20,000 employees about a year and a half ago. Once that work finished, I pivoted them to this work, and what they have been able to find and uncover is remarkable.”
Rollins summarized the administration’s goals for the program as “welfare to work, no more illegal aliens, and no more fraud,” adding: “I mean, this is what the president promised the people.”
