Talking about how states administer the program. Another Panel Focused on barriers to nutritional food access in rural areas as snaps Economic Impact on local communities. This hearing is 2 1 2 hours. Good morning. I call this meeting of the Senate Committee on agricultural nutrition in order. Over the last several months, i along with a Ranking Member and our colleagues on this committee having working on a new farm bill, an important part of this process has been to hold hearings on each farm bill title and to listen to stake holders. Im proud to say that the committee has sufficiently conducted our work in this area, having held hearings so far on eight titles. Todays meeting cover Nutrition Program on farm bill. Two titles remain, the process as far as the opportunity to review the full range of usda programs to ensure that they are operating efficiently and effectively. Not every Program Needs a Major Overhaul but many federal programs can benefit from increased efficiency, improved integrity and the production of waste. As we conduct this review, it is important to remember the purpose of these critical Nutrition Programs. They are not about longterm dependency, they are being giving aid in times of trouble. They are about ensuring our nations security, helping folks become productive members of our economy and about assisting the vulnerable among us who cannot help themselves. Part of a thorough review includ includes verifying the programs have been administered and implemented properly at the federal and state levels. Now unfortunately we have learned of significant issues regarding the administration and oversight of the supplemental Nutritionist Program of what we call snap. The Departments Office of Inspector General, and the department of justice have revealed states have purposely used, quote, whatever means necessary, end quote. To miss lead the federal government to obtain bonuses or to avoid financial penalties. Witnesses here today will provide details but what we have discovered is 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 at the same time have made when administering this program is completely unknown. Simply put, no one knows the error rate of snap and that is unacceptable. And the federal government does not know the basic element of 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 that this program is making every dollar count, and ensure 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 Members something will change. We are not talking about rampid fraud here, or rampid program abuse, we are talking about states cheating and gaming the system, resulting in an inability to even measure how many tax payer dollars are being spent in error. This is not fair to tax payers, it is certainly not fair to those who depend on this program and it is not right. It is our duty to ensure that the integrity of this program, which is vital to those among us in need is able to be measured and to be verified. Once that is accomplished, we must also ensure this program is truly serving those in need, helps those to achieve selfsustainability and not hindering theyre ability to succeed. Much has been made of the, quote, work requirements. But it is our job to be delivertive and informed when considers how we chose the goal of enabling those worth receiving public assistance to maintain selfsufficiency. The last farm bill included a significant investment in work pilots to test effective method of ensuring the longterm assessment of folks. We will need to build on that investment and continue to test proven method of success. As we undertake this process with the goal of integrity and truly helping people to become selfsustaining well need the support and flexibility of all program stake holders. Lines in the sand and uncompromising positions will benefit. Working together, i am confident we can find a way to ensure the integrity of snap and their critical need that the program meets. With that, it is my pleasure to recognize senator for any remarks she may have. But before you i would like to take a moment to express appreciation to the departments food and Nutrition Services and other agencies for their work in providing assistance to those effected by the recent tragedies 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 ensure that Program Participants and others have access to assistance in this time of need. I receive the departments preparation in response and id 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 addressed to pass the farm bill. Senator staff gnaw i yield to you for any comments you may make. Thank you more mr. Chairman and it continues to be a great opportunity to work with you. First recognizing the devastation that hurricanes irma and harvey have caused if the south. These storms jurn score the need for disaster systems for both our farmers and families. I want to commend secretary perdue for his quick action to provide flexibility for those in the path of these storms so having enough to eat is the least of theyre worries. Our families deserve a reliable safety net in times of need. Whether its making disaster snap available during a hurricane or ensuring that can whether the storm of job loss during the recession. Nutritional programmes are vital to rebuilding after disaster strikes. The Great Recession hit our country like the force of nature causing too Many Americans to lose their home and jobs. For those who face unexpected unemployment or underemployment, the supplemental knew trissals program is a life line to keep food on the table while they look for a stable longterm job that allows them to fully support their families. This is a point worth repeating, snap support families, its about america saying we got your back when there is an emergency. Nearly half of snap recipients are children. The vast majority are children, seniors, people with disadvantages or care givers that live in those household. Approximately 1. 5 million veterans received snap at some point during the year. Many of those heroes are considered able bodied despite lasting challenges from their time of service. Even current military families face food hardship. Many utilize snap and visit food banks stretched thin to Reach Community needs. Its important we keep these people in mind, like mr. Parker whose here today to share his story about the impact of snap in his life. And thats an important story. Its important reflecting other stories as well as we consider chang changes to nutrition systems in the farm bill. As committee we can make improvements to snap. We need to make improvements and every single area, hold every Single Program in the farm bill accountable. As we shared for every area of the federal government. We will continue, i will continue to be very focused on making sure 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 that as prices go down in farm country, but jobs have gone up for families, its really important to note that we will see significant savings over the last ten years in snap because thing are working as they should, people are going back to work and needing less assistance with their food. In 2014, we made common sense reform to further strengthen the integrity of nutrition assistance. While Nutrition Programs have a low rate of error and fraud, weve investigated low cases and use while protecting benefits that needed access to the Family Safety net. We also included employment and training pilots to allow states to test innovative strategy to help snap with its participants find stable longterm employment. These pilots along with the broader snap Employment TrainingProgram CreateImportant Community partnerships to connect people to jobs and training that works. Rather than focusing on arbitrary cuts to push people off of needed Food Assistance, we shall focus as we have in the past, there are types of volunteer partnerships that help families succeed. As ive indicated before, the good news is this is happening as this economy has improved and people are getting back to work, we want the economy to move faster. So, everyone has the opportunity for a good paying job, but we are seeing savings that in the Nutrition Programs, they are working as intended. The Congressional Budge Office recently estimated the farm bill is projected to save 80 billion, more than initially expected. Largely driven by reduced spending on Food Assistance. Looking ahead to the next farm bill, well continue to look for ways to strengthen Health Outcomes through snap, like snap education and the very successful food nutrition and Center Program that has often been called double up bucks. Well also ensure the oversight of snap at the state and federal level is working as it should. I look forward to hearing from the s da and the Attorney Generals Office today of the steps already been taken. I want to learn more about the ways we can support the work the food and Nutrition Services are doing to strengthen the equal control program. Mr. Claurm 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. I thank you senator. Welcome my first panel of witnesses before the committee this morning. Mr. Brandon lips. Mr. Lips currently serves as the matter of food and Nutrition Services as well as the acting deputy under secretary of food and Nutrition Services as well as food and services at the department. He oversees 15 nutrition assistance program. Prior to his time at the usda, mr. Lip served as chief of staff and the officer of chancellor Robert Dunkin of texas tech university. Home of the ever passing and successful read raiders, and led nutrition policy for the House Agricultural Committee during the 2014 farm bill. Welcome to you sir, and i look forward to your testimony. Mr. Harden, gill harden, assistant Inspector General for audit with the office of Inspector General. Mr. Hardin is the assistant and Inspector General for the audit at the department of the office of Inspector General. He currently managers all auditings of the department and previously has served in a variety of roles at the oig headquarters. Mr. Hardin began his career at the Western Region office and also oversaw performs and National Audits for the northwest region. Welcome sir, i look forward to hearing your perspective. Lastly we have miss ann, m coffee. A company mr. Harden to respond the question as ann coffee also joins us from the office of the Inspector General. Shes served in she began her career at the office of Inspector General subsequently worked as a special agent with the oig and wen over to the department of homeland security. Following her return to the office of Inspector General in 2005, miss coffee led the special Operations Division and then the investigation, liaison and hawk line division. Welcome to you maam, i look forward to your testimony. Mr. Lips. Good morning mr. Chairman, Ranking Members staff and members of the committee. Let me start by thank youing you for the recognition of the secretary produced leadership and the hard work of our staff, certainly in n s df but also nationwide. The staff has worked overtime to make sure everybody gets fed and we appreciate that. Im honored to be here today to talk about the supplemental Nutrition Program. I am the acting deputy undersecretary in the Food Administration service. I looking forward to working to make sure those in need have access to food proficiently, evgtively and with the utmost integrity. Working with state agencies, s f programs our abundance to ensure no american goes hungry. Youve invited me here today to talk about staff Quality Control or qc. Staffs measures often refer to it as the payment error rate. This is refers to payments too high and those too low. Its a measure of issuing benefits. Quality control is a two tiered system between states revocations for errors and s f reviews a sample of those to make sure the facts have made the correct determination. Usda releases a National Error rate for snap on investigation. For fiscal years 2015 and 2016. F and s noted rate reductions appeared to happen too quickly like dropping off the cliff, making us question the integrity of the qc system. That led snap to create error to comb the area for bias. When s f shows all states we looked at showed problems in all cat guerra think wick le removed to different data. Some states had made process errors but states were hiding error from federal reviewers. In doing say they by passed our data controls, preventing snap from catching the bias until based on our findings s f began implementing corrective action with these 42 states to eliminate the bias at state level in 2014. S f also made our own policies guidance and review process more r robust. We issue guidance with our handbook, developing a new management evaluation guide to strengthen our oversight and made Data Services available to state findings. F s owns our role in these problems and taking strong action to solve them. The egregious problems we saw do not result in unclear guidance. We learned in some states error reduction committees which are intended to identify errors and present them from Going Forward were instead hiding the errors. Fully eliminating the bias will require a commit of faith on all sides. S f did not release the rates in 2015 because the data was unreliable. I fully expect to release an err rate in june of 2017 and 2018 when the forms are in the data. We will hold ourselves accountable and our state partners accountable. We look forward to working with you on Additional Solutions to prevent this problem in the future. Thank you and im happy to answer any questions. Mr. Harden. Good morning chairman roberts, Ranking Members and members of the committee. Thank you for opportunity to testify about oig efforts. With me today is ann coffee, the assistant ig for investigations. My statement will focus on the audits of staff, qc process as well as related investigations. Through our audits, f s helps oig with data. Our snap related investigations of the same period have led to over 2300 arrests, 1600 indictments, 1500 convictions as well as 296 million in monetary results. In 2013, oig initiated an audit of snaps qv process. We recognized the rate for snap has been declining, snap benefits have been doubled to increase participation. Even in a low error rate the profit for snaps averaged 2 billion annually. In all eight states we visited, private consult tans and or state review committees used method to indicate data found rather than report the cases as errors. A number of states hired Third Party Consultants who worked to eliminate errors. These states show dramatic if unwarranted improvement in their error rates from 21 to 25 depending on the state. We also found other issues with how error rates were calculated. For example, state qc reviewers did not call late errors during their cases. Also, f s did not adequately review state q results. Of the 60 cases we reviewed were unsupported, questionable or inkratd. As a result, s f determining the snap National Error rate. In total we admitted 19 recommendations to help s f improve the qc progress. As of august 17 the recommendations were closed. Our investigators received a whistle blower complaint related to the activities of a thirdparty consultant working in one state. So far this investigation has been resulted in go states, virginia and wisconsin agreeing to pay over 14 million to resolve allegations both administrations. Both states admitted they used consultants to review the errors cases identified by their workers. They provide it had use of several improperly and biased qc practices. Including finding a basis of drop