Liz Saville Roberts: “There has been a real success story in regards to the Food Stamp Program and reforms that have been initiated. In 1996…”

“There has been a real success story in regards to the Food Stamp Program and reforms that have been initiated. In 1996, with all due respect to that program and others who supported it, it was a program out of control. It couldn't even be audited. The inspector general came in, an inspector general from New York--a tough cop, by the way, named Roger Viadero, who has done an outstanding job, basically said that the Food Stamp Program could not even be audited due to the fraud, abuse, and organized crime involvement. As a matter of fact, he had a tape that we showed during the Committee hearings which ended up on 60 Minutes. And we know all the stories about the Food Stamp Program, about the waiting in line, people with food stamps exchanging them for cash and then buying things that obviously did not represent a nutritious market basket of food. They got a new inspector general. We exposed the fraud and abuse on 60 Minutes and saved $3 billion to $5 billion in regard to the fraud and abuse. Then we instituted major reforms.”