The maximum food stamp amount for one person is $200/mo., which works out to over $6.50/day. For two people, the maximum is $367/mo.--that's about $6.11/day. (I'm using 30 days per month.) The maximum decreases slightly as recipients are added, which makes sense because feeding five is probably not five times as expensive as feeding one. Food stamps are intended as a supplement for those who have some income...as their income goes up, their food stamps go down until they reach a point of non-eligibility.

Sorry, but that is not possible. Someone who gets cash assistance--which comes on the same card as food stamps--can take the cash out and put it in the bank. But you cannot go to a bank and have your food stamps deposited.

praise from a supervisor.

I hope you are joking because that is simply not true. There were years when I was a caseworker that I identified overpayments in the neighborhood of my gross wages, if not the total value of my employee benefits. I see no reason to believe that the level of fraud is higher in my office than all the others in the country, and therefore I think that our country is being victimized by welfare fraud at a level that is sickening. We need for the welfare system to take responsibility for the millions of cases based on fraud and to go to the local level to find ways to catch the cheats. Oh, and a little positive reinforcement would be nice. For all the cases I shut down by looking around to identify the fraud, I never--EVER--got one word of

5. We also need penalties and bad publicity for those who assist in welfare fraud. Employers paying people under the table, particularly if they are submitting false statements, parents who lie for their children...unfortunately there does not ever seem to be action taken against those who aid and abet. 6. There used to be certain requirements for food stamp recipients that have been relaxed, and these should be reestablished. At one point there were no resource limits, and we had people with very fat bank accounts putting their hands out. Thankfully, that much has been restored.

4. As much as you all hate public employees, it is not helpful to have the number of caseworkers at a minimum...when they are going nuts just trying to get their huge caseloads under control, it is much less likely that they'll look into the cases that don't add up. And there are the caseworkers who never question anything or send cases to the investigators... they should be questioned by their supervisors as to why they'll swallow stories that should have made the client's nose grow. I was enlightened by a supervisor who said, "Now, does that make any sense to you?" That remark started me on a path that led to me becoming fairly successful at finding welfare cheats...but loathing my job more and more. Turnover is huge for the job.

2. When you see someone purchasing steak or lobster, this is probably a sign that this person is cheating the system somehow. If they were really deprived, they'd need every bit of the allotment. 3. We need stricter penalties and more publicity for people who are committing welfare fraud, which is not only not rare but fairly common. Usually it's a single mother who lives with the father of her children but lies about that. Sometimes it's someone who's lying about self-employment...like the truck driver who always came out in the red, according to his tax return. I suggested to this man that he should quit the business so that at least he'd be at $0 instead of -$xxxxx. He said, "how would I survive?" Uh-huh....

Until recently I was a caseworker handling food stamps and Medicaid. I am very happy to say that I now have other employment. I don't argue with any of what was said in the article, but sometimes the important points are missed. 1. First of all, most people think of welfare as cash assistance and then food stamps. Wrong. The most expensive program is Medicaid...cash assistance is the smallest of the two programs, largely because it requires so much more from the adult in the case. At least where I am, Medicaid pays about $800/mo. per person to the HMOs that administer the program. I admit to more sympathy for people with children who want Medicaid when they don't have any other access to medical care, which is priced insanely high.

I have no proof of it, but I have to wonder how much children lose when their parents are not readers...not because they can't be taught to read, but because they get the message that reading is not an interesting thing to do. I know that I grew up with parents who read routinely and kept a lot of books in the home. That sends a message. I work in welfare, and whenever I have to go to the lobby, I see a lot of clients waiting--they have to wait quite a long time to see someone. Not once have I seen someone reading a book. I can't imagine going to a place where I'd know I'd have to wait a long time and not bringing a book to read.

I agree with you to a point. But I'd rather have leaders at least pointing in the right direction, even if they themselves fall short of behaving as they should. It is one thing to make a personal mistake, but it's even worse if someone falls short and then tries to say that it's OK what they did.