{"id":18993,"date":"2013-05-29T19:09:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T23:09:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18993"},"modified":"2013-05-29T19:09:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T23:09:41","slug":"collecting-welfare-benefits-in-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=18993","title":{"rendered":"Collecting Welfare Benefits In Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know that there are a lot of people collecting welfare benefits<\/a> and that makes it hard to keep track of every penny, but Massachusetts<\/a> has taken inefficiency to a new level. WCVB<\/a> reported yesterday that an audit of the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance identified 1,164 cases where recipients continued to receive a total of $2.39 million in benefits from six to 27 months after they were reported to be deceased.<\/p>\n

Boston.com<\/a> also commented on the audit:<\/p>\n

The report<\/a>, which covered food stamps<\/a>, cash, and other benefits to low-income<\/a> families, estimated that recipients using a dead person\u2019s Social Security number<\/a> alone received at least $2.4 million in between July 2010 and April 2012. It also flagged another $15 million in suspicious transactions from electronic benefit cards during the two-and-a-half-year period the auditor reviewed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boston.com also reported:<\/p>\n

The state auditor also found another $15 million in suspicious transitions on electronic benefit cards – including nearly $5 million where all the food benefits were withdrawn at once; $4.6 million in transactions from distant states or territories (including Hawaii<\/a>, Florida<\/a>, and Puerto Rico<\/a>); $3.6 million where recipients made multiple purchases or withdrawals within an hour; $1.5 million where recipients regularly rang up transactions in even dollar amounts (such as $100) and $840,000 where a card number was manually entered into a retail terminal instead of being swiped (suggesting a card user may have stolen the card number, but didn\u2019t have the actual card).<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is taxpayers’ money. If those responsible for spending it cannot do a better job of being responsible, we should stop giving them the money.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that there are a lot of people collecting welfare benefits and that makes it hard to keep track of every penny, but Massachusetts has taken inefficiency to a new level. WCVB reported yesterday that an audit of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4683,140,1650,142,216,264,288,1484],"class_list":["post-18993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-15-million","tag-florida","tag-hawaii","tag-massachusetts","tag-poverty","tag-puerto-rico","tag-social-security-number","tag-welfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18995,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18993\/revisions\/18995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}