Charles W. Stenholm: “food stamp rules make quite clear that residents of most institutions are not eligible to participate in the Food Stamp…”

“food stamp rules make quite clear that residents of most institutions are not eligible to participate in the Food Stamp Program. Yet, according to GAO, thousands of prisoners are being counted as members of food stamp households, resulting in those households receiving more food stamps than they should. GAO has recommended that the Food and Consumer Service encourage States to implement periodic computer matches of data on State and local prison inmates with data on food stamp participants. H.R. 1000 goes several steps further than this recommendation. It requires States to perform such periodic verifications and also requires that the matches be not only of State and local prison inmates but of Federal inmates as well. It includes a provision allowing the Secretary of Agriculture to exempt from this requirement any State having circumstances making it impractical to perform the matches, such as a lack of a central computerized data base for its prison population. States will have 1 year from the date of enactment to comply with the new requirement. Several States, such as Texas, already conduct such matches. Other States have plans to begin conducting these matches in the future. This bill will provide the impetus for most States to perform periodic matches, thereby saving the taxpayers at least $1 million a year. It is a good bill, and I urge your support of it.”