Foundation for Government Accountability

09/02/2026

Somewhere, a single mom is doing the math—rent, groceries, whatever's left on her food stamp card—hoping it stretches to Friday. She's exactly who this program was built for.

But last year, more than $10 billion in food stamp spending was improper. And that number is almost certainly too low. USDA doesn't even count errors under $58, and some states have been caught hiding their mistakes outright.

Every dollar lost to fraud, waste, or an ineligible enrollee is a dollar that isn't there for her.

Here's the good news: states finally have a reason to fix it. New program integrity measures hold states accountable for their error rates—and preserve resources for the families who actually need them.

Read the full research 👇
https://thefga.org/research/food-stamp-waste-fraud-and-abuse-cost-taxpayers-billions-program-integrity-measures-will-fix-that/

09/01/2026

Able-bodied adults on Medicaid now drive 36% of the program's total costs nationwide—more than seniors, children, or people with disabilities combined. That's not an accident. It's what happens when states quietly delay the work requirements they already promised to enforce.

Arkansas didn't delay. It implemented work requirements on time—and thousands of able-bodied adults found jobs, with earnings nearly tripling within two years. That's the power of work in action.

CMS has a choice right now: hold the line or let states dodge accountability behind "good faith" waivers that push implementation off indefinitely. Every month of delay is a month taxpayers keep footing the bill and able-bodied adults stay locked out of the dignity that comes with a paycheck.

CMS should reject the delays. Read our full research and find out what's really at stake👇
https://thefga.org/research/without-delay-ensuring-the-successful-implementation-of-medicaid-work-requirements/

08/30/2026

Welfare spending is nearly three times higher today than before 1996's landmark reform!

FGA's Jonathan Bain breaks down three decades of loopholes exploited by bureaucrats—and how the One Big Beautiful Bill refuses to let history repeat itself. ⤵️

Thirty years after the 1996 welfare reform, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the largest welfare reform in American history—if states are held accountable.

08/27/2026

Thirty years ago, Washington agreed welfare should be temporary and tied to work. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill turned that agreement into law for Medicaid and food stamps. That fight isn't over. It just moved to CMS waiver approvals, state error rates, and public housing offices. The next stage is to shrink programs more dramatically, eliminate unnecessary and harmful handouts, and eliminate all loopholes and waivers – and it shouldn’t take the next 30 years to move it forward.

👀 Read more https://thefga.org/30-years-of-welfare-reform/

08/26/2026

Thirty years ago, America made a promise: if you can work, you should work, and if you do, poverty shouldn't be the reward.

That promise wasn't a talking point. It was law. On August 22, 1996, a bipartisan Congress passed welfare reform, and the results left even the skeptics stunned. Welfare caseloads fell 59 percent. More than 2.4 million people moved from government dependency into jobs—paychecks, purpose, and a shot at the American Dream they'd been locked out of. Single mothers went to work in record numbers. The economy grew because of it.

That's not ancient history. That's what happens when Washington trusts people to rise and builds a system that expects them to.

Then, for thirty years, that promise got quietly dismantled. Loopholes grew. Waivers piled up. By last year, most states had no real work requirement left standing.

Now the comeback: the One, Big Beautiful Bill picks up exactly where 1996 left off, projected to save taxpayers more than $1 trillion over 10 years while putting work back at the center of the safety net.

Thirty years ago, we proved this works. Today, we get to prove it again.

Here's to the next thirty. 🎉

08/23/2026

The One Big Beautiful Bill built upon and expanded the 1996 welfare reform law in an extraordinary way!

President Trump's leadership and a Republican majority focused on reform made it happen.

Watch the story. 🇺🇸

08/21/2026

The food stamp program costs more than $100 billion a year, and the federal government picks up the entire bill for benefits. States don't risk a dime, so a lot of them have had zero reason to stop the waste.

New Mexico's food stamp error rate sits at 14.6 percent. That means nearly $15 of every $100 the state hands out is lost to overpayments, mistakes, and abuse nobody is chasing down. The state's own food stamp director admitted she has no real plan to fix it.

🚨 New Mexico isn't even the worst offender. Alaska tops nearly 25 percent. Washington, D.C., Georgia, and Florida all clear 15 percent too. Every one of them qualifies for a loophole that delays real penalties for years, buried inside the new cost-sharing rules meant to hold states accountable.

Be bad enough, and the consequences just wait.

😬 That money was supposed to help families who genuinely need it buy groceries. Instead it's propping up systems states have had no incentive to fix, until now.

States finally have a financial reason to clean this up. Read the full research and what it will take 👇
🔗 thefga.org/research/food-stamp-waste-fraud-and-abuse-cost-taxpayers-billions-program-integrity-measures-will-fix-that/

08/19/2026

🏠 Imagine waiting two years for a housing voucher, sometimes decades, while someone down the list has been on assistance for 15 years and has never once been asked to work.

That's not a hypothetical. It's happening in public housing authorities across the country right now.

New research from FGA found that 43 percent of able-bodied adults without young children who are receiving housing assistance do not work at all. And because there's no work requirement pushing them toward self-sufficiency, more than half of able-bodied adults remain on housing assistance for more than 15 years.

Meanwhile, nearly all federal housing assistance programs have long waitlists, leaving millions of truly needy families without assistance—families with disabilities, seniors, kids, who did everything right and are still stuck checking a list that isn't moving.

The fix isn't complicated. States that have already tested work requirements in public housing have seen incomes rise, employment climb, and caseloads shrink, freeing up space for the families who need it most.

There is dignity in work. There should be dignity in how we run public housing, too.

States should require Public Housing Authorities to implement work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving housing assistance so assistance goes to the people who truly need it, and so the people who can work get the paycheck, not just the waitlist number.

Read the full research 👉 https://thefga.org/research/work-requirements-in-public-housing-can-lift-millions-out-of-dependency/

08/17/2026

😵 For years, states got it wrong, and taxpayers picked up the tab.

Forty-one states and Washington, D.C. are handing out food stamp benefits with error rates of six percent or higher. That's not a clerical slip here and there. That's billions of taxpayer dollars going out the door based on bad math, outdated records, and government systems nobody bothered to fix.

Until now, there was no consequence. States could get it wrong year after year, and Washington would just keep cutting the check.

Not anymore.

💵 Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, states with high error rates will finally share in the cost of their own mistakes. Get it right, pay nothing. Get it wrong at the highest tier, and the state covers 15 percent of the cost. Florida could be on the hook for more than $900 million. Illinois, nearly $670 million. Georgia, over half a billion.

Here's the question for lawmakers and taxpayers alike: what does your state owe?

We broke down the number for all fifty states. Some owe nothing. Some owe hundreds of millions. Yours is on the list.

👉 Find your state's bill here https://thefga.org/research/food-stamp-waste-fraud-and-abuse-cost-taxpayers-billions-program-integrity-measures-will-fix-that/

08/13/2026

👤 Someone stole a Social Security number today. Maybe it belonged to a grandmother who died a decade ago. Maybe it belonged to a child. And right now, nothing stops that stolen identity from being used to sign up for welfare benefits.

Nearly 24 million Americans have their identity stolen every year, and states aren't required to check whether the person applying for benefits is actually who they claim to be. That's how you end up with welfare checks going out to people who died during the Reagan administration. That's how a single Social Security number ends up enrolled in Medicaid in nine states at once.

This isn't a paperwork glitch. It's identity theft, and it's draining resources away from the families who actually need help.

The fix is simple: verify identity before enrollment. Requiring it nationwide would save taxpayers $29 billion and finally close the door on this fraud for good.

Read the full research 👉 https://thefga.org/research/fake-stolen-identities-welfare-programs/