I didn’t simply learn Sunday’s Boston Herald exposé on “rampant” SNAP fraud as a taxpayer or a candidate for U.S. Senate. I learn it as a child who grew up on meals stamps.
I do know what it feels prefer to depend on that card to eat. I do know the skinny line between a full abdomen and a hungry night time. When a whistleblower reveals that fraud rings “steal unabated” hundreds of thousands in advantages — spending funds out of state whereas authentic recipients discover their playing cards empty — it isn’t only a “price range leak.” It’s a gut-wrenching betrayal of essentially the most weak kids in our Commonwealth.
Fraud doesn’t simply steal from taxpayers; it steals from the child I was. It starves the very households this system was designed to assist.
The whistleblower’s particulars are damning: managers strain employees to “tread frivolously” on vetting, management downplays $12 million in uncovered fraud, and unchecked unlawful immigration fuels a surge in abuse of the system. But whereas the Division of Transitional Help claims fraud is “uncommon,” officers refuse to share knowledge with the USDA.
This tradition of secrecy begins on the high. Legal professional Common Andrea Campbell calls the hassle to audit the Legislature a “ploy,” but she stands by whereas officers block the state’s personal auditor. This isn’t about “separation of powers”; it’s about leaders refusing accountability for a system they’ve clearly damaged.
That’s the reason 28 fellow taxpayers and I filed a lawsuit final week to implement the 72% voter mandate for a legislative audit. We additionally name for a “DAT Squeeze” (Democratic Accountability & Transparency Squeeze) — a focused federal freeze on nonessential, nonemergency discretionary state grants — till Beacon Hill stops spending public cash on personal attorneys to dam transparency and opens the books.
Now we have rigorously shielded important funding similar to SNAP and Medicaid from this freeze. Our objective is to guard this system, not punish the poor. However we can’t defend what officers refuse to point out us.
Beacon Hill’s obstruction permits scammers and hurts the needy. It’s time to cease the rallies, cease the justifications, and honor democracy by permitting the audit.
Taxpayers and the youngsters who depend on SNAP each deserve a system that works for them — not for fraud rings.
John Deaton is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. He’s a U.S. Marine veteran and the lead plaintiff within the case Deaton et al. v. Clerk of the Home.
