Jindal Moves to Strip Food Stamps from Abusers - 612 Words

Jindal Moves to Strip Food Stamps from Abusers: This article provides the argument that the Governor of Louisiana, Governor Jindhal, plans to charge the recipients of food stamp benefits in his county with fraud is justified if they abused the system during a mechanical shut down. Apparently when the food stamp system shut down, it no longer recognized the available balance on benefit cards. As a result, active participants were not only allowed to use their cards for an unrestricted amount well beyond their available limit, but those who were no longer active participants were allowed to use their cards for an unrestricted amount as well. The governor’s administration is suggesting that the minimum penalty would be 12 months off the program to a maximum penalty of permanently removed from the program. Apparently, there is an emergency protocol for stores to set an emergency spending limit of $50 to food stamp card holders should the system shut down. Many of the larger merchants such as Wal-Mart chose not to honor the emergency limit and instead of rejecting use of the cards, they allowed unlimited use. Millholon (2013) stated, â€Å"More than 12,000 transactions generated insufficient funds notice once the electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, system came back online Oct. 12, 2013 and retailers could process stored transactions† (para. 2). However the State of Louisiana will not have to pay out all that money. Apparently because the stores did not honor the $50