For the last several monthess i along with Ranking Member and colleagues on this committee have been working on a new farm bill. An important part of this process has been to hold hearings on each title. Im proud to say the committee has officially conducted the work, having held hearings so far on eight titles. Todays hearing covers the four and five. Two titles remain. The reauthorization process affords us the opportunity to review the full range of usda programs to insure that theyre operating efficiently and effectively. Not every Program Needs to measure overall but many can benefit from increased deficiency, improved integrity and the reduction of waste. As we conduct this review, it is important to remember the purpose of these critical nutrition programs. Theyre not about long term. Theyre about giving aid in times of trouble. Theyre about insuring our nations security, helping folks become productive members of our economy and assisting the vulnerable among us who cannot help themselves. Part of a thorough review includes insuring theyre being implemented properly at the federal and state levels. Now unfortunately we have learned of some significant issues are eguarding theed administration and oversight of the s. N. A. P. Program. Investigations by the food and Nutrition Service, the Departments Office of Inspector General and the department of justice have revealed that states have purposely used quote whatever means necessary, unquote to mislead the federal government to obtain bonuses or avoid financial penalties. Witnesses here today will provide details with what we had discovered was that the integrity of the snap program cannot be verified. In all but a few states the process used to measure errors has failed. Thus the level of erroneous payments states have made when administering the program is completely unknown. Simply put no one knows the error rate of s. N. A. P. And that is unacceptable. And the federal government does not even know the basic element of the problem, such as how long this has been occurring. This program accounts for over 75 of farm bill spending. If we are unable to verify this program is making every dollar count and insure the right amount of assistance is going to those who really need it, then something needs to change and with the help of the distinguished Ranking Member, something will change. We are not talking about rampant fraud here. Were not talking about rampant program abuse. We are talking about states cheating and gaming the system, resulting in an inability to even measure how many taxpayer dollaress are being spent in error. This is not fair to taxpayers. And its not right. It is our duty to insure that the integrity of this program which is vital to those among us in need is able to be measured and verified. Once that is accomplished, we must also insure this program is truly serving those in need, helping them to achieve self sustainability and not hindering their ability to succeed. Now much has been made of the quote work requirements. But it is our job to be at liberty and harm of enabling those receiving public assistance to achieve self sufficiency. The last farm bill included a significant investment in work pilots. The test effective methods of insuring longterm success. We will need to build on that investment and continue to test proven methods of success. As we undertake this process with the goals of Program Integrity and truly helpling people to become self sustaining, we will need the support and flexibility of all programs. Lines in the sand and uncompromising positions will benefit nobody and especially not the vulnerable populations these programs serve. Working together i am confident we can find a way to insure the integrity of s. N. A. P. Sw the critical need the program meets. I recognize senator for any remarks you may have but first id like to take a moment to express appreciation to the departments food and new trishz services and other agencies in their work to providing assistance with regards to the hurricanes that we have experienced in this country. I understand that Department Staff have worked around the clock to provide services and insure they have access to assistance in this time of need. I would like to thank senator secretary perdue and his staff and for everybody involved for their dedication and hard work. It will take the same spirit of working together for those of us to remedy these and other issues that need to be doctorsaddress the farm bill. Well, thank you, mr. Chairman and that continues to be a great plethser to work with you and i want to start out echoing the comments you just made about first recognizing the heart breaking devastation hurricanes harvey and irma have caused in the past. They underscore the critical need for disastrous systems for farmers and our families and i want to recommend secretary perdue for his quick action to provide Food Assistance and flex n ability for those in the path of the storm so having enough to eat is the least of their worries. Our families deserve a reliable saflt net in times of need, whether its making disaster snap available during the hurricane or insuring they can weather the storm of job loss during a recession, Nutrition Assistance Programess are vital to rebuilding after disaster strikes. The Great Recession hit our country like a force of nature, causing too Many Americans to lose their homes and jobs. For those who faced unexpected unumploemnt or underemployment the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is a lifeline to keep food on the table while they look for a stable, longterm job that allowess them to fully support their families and this is a point worth repeating. Snap supports families. Its about america saying we got your back when there is an emergency. Half of snap recipients are children, as you know. The vast majority are children, seniors, people with disabilities or parents and care govern givers that live in those households. Approximately 1 1 2 million veterans receive snap at some point during the year and many of those heroes are considered able bodied despite lasting challenges from their time of service. Even current military families face current food hardships. Many utilize snap and visit food banks often stretched thin to meet community needs. Its important we keep these people in mind like mr. Parker whos here today to share his story about the impact of snap in his life and thats an important story and its important reflecting other stories as well as we consider changes to nutrition assistance in the farm bill. As a committee we can make improvements to snap. Hold every Single Program in the farm bill accountable. As we should for every area of the federal government and we will continue, i will continue to be very focussed on making sure that we are doing that while still preserving critical food access. As we know we have a farm safety net and a Family Safety net. We need to make sure theres accountability in both and support for both and as prices go down in farm country but jobs have gone up for families, its really important to note we will see significant savings in snap because things are working as they should. People are going to back to work and needing less assistance with their food. In 2014 we made commonsense reforms to further strengthen the integrity of nutrition assistance. While nutrition programs have an extremely low rate of error and fraud, we addressed rare cases of misuse while protecting benefits and eligibility for those that needed access to the Family Safety net. We also included employment in training pilots to test Innovative Strategies to help snap participantess find stable longterm employment. As well hear today they create Important Community partnerships, rather than focusing on arbitrary tests to push people off of needed Food Assistance, we should focus, as we have, on the types of voluntary partnerships that help families succeed and as i indicated before the good news is this is happening as the economy has improved and people are getting back to work. We certainly want the economy to move faster so everyone has the opportunity for a good paying job but we have seeing savings in the nutrition programs. They are working as intended. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the farm bill is estmeated to save 80 billion more than expected, largely driven by reduced spending on Food Assistance. Looking ahead to the next farm bill well continue to look for ways we can strengthen Health Outcomes in snap through efforts like snap Nutrition Education and the very successful Incentive Program that has often been called double up. Well if had sure oversight at the state and federal level is working as it should. I look forward to hearing from the usda and Inspector Generals office today on the stuff already being taken to the sure accuracy and timing in snap and want to learn more about the ways we can support the work the food and Nutrition Service is doing to strengthen the Quality Control program. And as always i look forward to working with you as we move forward to put together a great farm bill and well continue to fine tune these programs while we are protecting food access for millions of families. Thank you. Acting deputy at Consumer Services within the department. He currently serves as administrator of the food and Nutrition Services as well as undersecretary and Consumer Services at the department as the fns administrator resooeved 15 Nutrition Assistance Programs, including a supplem t Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He served his chief of staff and the office of chancellor ducken at texas tech university. Home of the ever passing, unsuccessful red raiders. And new trigds policy for thing a rucultural committee for the 2014 farm bill. Welcome, sir and i look forward to your testimony. Mr. Gale harden with the office of Inspector General. Mr. Harden is the assistant Inspector General for the audit of Inspector General. He currently manages all audits at the department and previously has served in a variety of roles at the oig head quarters. He also over saw performance in financialed ed audits for the northwest region. Lastly we have ms. Ann m. Coffee, assistant Inspector General at office of Inspector General. Ann coffee, who also joins us from the department of agriculture office. She has served as the assistant Inspector General since 2015. She began her career at the office of assistant Inspector General and to the department of homeland security. Following her return to the office of Inspector General in 2005 ms. Coffee thread special operations division. Liaison and hotline division. Welcome to you, maam and i look forward to your testimony. Mr. Lipps. Let me start by thanking you for the recognition of secretary perdues leadership. Department wide as we work to p protect agriculture. Im honored to be here today to talk about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance ProgramQuality Control system and i am the administrator for the food Nutrition Service. I look forward to insuring those in need efficiently, effectively and with the utmost integrit integrity. Fns programess leverage to insure no american goes hungry. Youve invited me here today to talk about snap Quality Control or qc. Snaps qc system written as the payment error rate. This is a combination of payments that there too high and too low. Quality control is a two tiered systemal of shared responsibility between the states and fns. To insure states have in fact made the correct determination. Typically usda releases an error rate on an annual base, however they both found bias in the data that prevented us from releasing a error rate for fiscal years. They noted rate reductions appeared to to happen too quickly, making us question the integrity of the qt system. That led snap to create errors for the bias. When they found all ailth states we looked at showed problem said in all four categories. They quickly moved to an indepth review of data. The results surprised and greatly concerned our experts. More often states were hiding errors from federal reviewers and in doing so they bypassed our data control until the new indicators were developed. Based on our finding, fns began corrective a to eliminate the bias at late 2014. Fns has made our own policies more robust. We issued memmose and guidance. Provided additional training, developed a new management guide to strengthen our oversight and made new Data Services available. Let me be clear fns is taking strong action to solve them. But the most egregious problems we saw dont result we learned in some states error reduction committees intended to identify errors and prevent them Going Forward, were instead hiding the errors they found from fns. The changes weve made have made those behaviors less likely. Fns has not released National Error rates since 2015 because it was unreliable. I intend to release error rates in 2018. Were committed to improving the integrity of snap as a whole. Well hold ourselves and state partners accountable. Thank you and im happy to answer any questions. 3mr. Harden. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify about oigs efforts. With me today is ann coffee, the assistant chief for investigations. My Statement Today will focus on her audit of the snaps process. Throughout audits and investigations, we help improve the general oversight of snap. Over the past three years we have mublished six audit reports and 299 million in monetary findings. Our snap investigations lead to over 2300 arrests, 1600 indictments, 16 hundred 00 convikdss as well a said monetary results. In 2013 oig initiated a audit of snaps qc process. Snap benefits had nearly doubled. Even at low error rate, improper payments still averaged 2 billion annually. We found confidence cannot be placed in the error rate. For example in all eight states private consultants used methods to mitigate errors, rather than report them as errors and a number hired Third Party Consultants who improved the states error rate. They saw dramatic, improvingmentess in error rates depending on the state. We also found other issues with how error rates were calculated. For example state qc reviewers did not correctly calculate. As a result they were incorrectly excluded. And fns did not adequately review case results. They were unsupported questionable or inaccurate. In total we made a recommendations to help them improve the process. As of 2017, fns had closed seven of these investigations. So far this investigation has resulted in two states, virginia and wisconsin, agreeing to pay over 14 million to resolve allegations of snap. The consultant advised the use of several improper and biassed practices, including dropping error cases from review, selectively applying requirements to reduce errors and asking beneficiaries leading questions to eliminate error potenti potential. These practices have reduced the error rate and as a result they were paid performance bonuses for which they were not entitled. This investigation is ongoing. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to testify and open to any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Let me note we appreciate your statements, mr. Lipps, and mr. Ms. Coffee is here. The integrity of the largest Food Assistance program spends over 70 billion a year is simply unknown. We found the quality review process is broken and in need of reform and we have a number of states being investigated by the department of justice. Mr. Lipps. You stated that the 2014 error rate data raised questions at fns. Once the agency completed its indepth review, did you discover any indication when bias enters the states Quality Control process . Do you have a unfortunately i cant give you an exactancer to that question. We have concern its been in the system for quite some time. The oig notes in its report that the consultant first alcting wih states as early as 2004 when states and visual errorerates started dropping dramatically. So i think theres been some level of bias for over a decade. 2004 . Yes, sir. So we have a problem here that could have started 13 years ago . Thats correct. The fns review for fiscal year 2015 found 42 out of 53 states and territory agencies were improperlied a min straighting the Quality Control process. A document referenced by the media indicated the very preliminary estimates could be between four and 7 . If thats the case, thats almost double the 2014 error rate. Somethings pretty fishy here. That was biassed and would have indicated over 5 billion in error. Do you have any updated estimates for 2015. Unfortunately we do not. The data is so significantly biassed we do not feel we can provide you an accurate measure of that rate. So youre basically say