The mostly GOP House of Representatives decided $40 billion will be cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in September within the next 10 years because of the increasing government spending on the program. The cut will not only save our country billions of dollars but it will push states to make decisions on who gets food stamps, so less fraudulent stamp receivers will be able to waste taxpayers money.

Abuse has been a big issue when it comes to getting benefits from our state and federal government, and it is the main reason why this cut was passed in the house of representatives. With government spending about $78 billion on the program each year, lowering our funding will not only help decrease our country’s spending but also will make policy makers more vigilant in the process of handing out food stamps.

We as a country know that our spending is out of control and loose ends need to be cut in order to go back to a surplus. So why not take away funding from a program that many people abuse anyways?

Rather than focusing on the cuts being made for the program we should be concerned about the way the government decides who gets food stamps or not because of the budget cut.

The system they are using now is called “categorical eligibility” and isn’t an efficient or accurate way at determining this. Categorical eligibility looks to see if you’ve already gotten low-income help and makes a decision off of the persons welfare history.

“There are two basic pathways to gain financial eligibility for SNAP: (1) having income and resources below specified levels set out in federal  law; and (2) being ‘categorically,’ or automatically, eligible based on receiving benefits from other specified low-income assistance programs.” said the Congressional Research Service.

Although people who are on other low-income assistance programs tend to need help elsewhere, it’s not always true for everyone and the only way people should receive aid from SNAP is by the standards set by the program and government not by other welfare options.

“A small number of households would not have met gross income and asset eligibility,” without categorical eligibility according to the SNAP website but this still amounts to billions of dollars that is possibly being wasted on people who don’t require this assistance.

“15 percent of American are now collecting benefits,” according to a USA today article . That is around 47 million people who are using taxpayers money to help them with their grocery shopping whether they need it or not.

Reformation is not only needed in SNAP but in all kinds of our welfare programs. How will we continuously let people abuse our system and live off of other people’s hard earned money? People who are going through a job loss or a difficult financial time are losing out to people who would rather not work for what they have and this mindset can only be changed by making it difficult for the abusers to abuse.