{"id":7603,"date":"2013-07-22T13:07:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T13:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7603"},"modified":"2013-07-22T13:07:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T13:07:35","slug":"us-welfare-recipients-shipping-food-stamp-groceries-overseas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=7603","title":{"rendered":"US welfare recipients shipping food stamp groceries overseas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"foodcoupons\"<\/a>Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout \u2014 with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.<\/p>\n

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.<\/p>\n

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture\u2019s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.<\/p>\n

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it\u2019s wrong,\u201d Tanner told The Post. \u201cThe purpose of this program is to help Americans who don\u2019t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it\u2019s wrong,\u201d Tanner told The Post. \u201cThe purpose of this program is to help Americans who don\u2019t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.<\/p>\n

Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody does it,\u201d said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. \u201cThey pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.\u201d<\/p>\n

Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.<\/p>\n

Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.<\/p>\n

They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.<\/p>\n

When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.<\/p>\n

Last week, a woman stuffed dozens of boxes of macaroni and evaporated milk into a barrel headed for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. She said she didn\u2019t have welfare benefits and bought the food herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is all worth more than $2,000,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been shopping since last December. You can help somebody else, someone who doesn\u2019t live in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

A man helping her pack the barrel said: \u201cWe\u2019re poor here, and they\u2019re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.\u201d – NY Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout \u2014 with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found. The practice is so … Continue reading “US welfare recipients shipping food stamp groceries overseas”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,123],"tags":[4142,4144,1638,4143],"class_list":["post-7603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","category-world","tag-food-stamps","tag-taxpayer-funded-benefits","tag-us","tag-welfare"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/foodcoupons.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7609,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7603\/revisions\/7609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}