Rep. Issa: Obama administration not fighting food stamp fraud

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday accused the Obama administration of being lax in going after food stamp fraud.

Speaking on Fox News, Issa cited a report that said of 4,600 retailers barred from accepting food stamps, 1,500 of them continued to do so at a cost of $750 million annually.

“[The investigators] didn’t use rocket science, they used open source,” Issa said. “They compared two lists — the lists of those who were getting it and the list of those who were denied it. This is something that at a basic level government should do. It was government’s own databases that they went to and discovered that there was no enforcement under this administration.”

Issa said food stamp recipients were “trading these food stamps for alcohol or cash to buy drugs,” which was “depriving families of the food they should have.”

“This is about food for families,” Issa continued. “So when people walk in with $100 in food stamps and they trade it for alcohol or they trade it for cash to go use illicitly, children are being denied food that we, the American people put this program together for. It’s about families not about cash or alcohol for individuals.”

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