Florida To Receive Massive Bonus For Wasting Money

by Austin Petersen
By Jonah Bennett

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will award Florida with a $7 million dollar bonus for only wasting $47 million dollars in the course of distributing food stamps to its recipients, Watchdog reports.

The remarkably high bonus came based on Florida placing second-last in the nation for the amount it misspent on food stamp benefits during 2013.

For the Department of Agriculture, fiscal management to the tune of $47,829,887 million dollars of wasted funds is worthy of recognition. This is a slight dip from their previous rank of lowest wastage rate in the nation last year, with an accompanying bonus of $8 million.

Interim Department of Children and Families Secretary for Florida Mike Carroll was encouraged by the results.

“We are pleased Florida is again being recognized as a leader for quality and accuracy in processing food assistance applications,” Mike Carroll said in a statement. “The department is committed to helping individuals in crisis and being able to quickly assist families and individuals in need of these resources is one of our principal functions.”

“This is the seventh year in a row that DCF’s improvements and accuracy in correctly processing food assistance applications has received accolades and bonus money from the federal government, totaling more than $54 million,” he added.

The Department of Agriculture allocates bonuses based on error rates. This year, Florida reached an error rate of 0.81 percent.

Virginia upset Florida for 2013 by achieving the rank of lowest error rate in the U.S., and so Virginia received a hefty $1.7 million dollar bonus. Its error rate was only 0.44 percent, which is approximately $6 million out of $1.4 billion.

More than one in ten Virginians are enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the rate of Virginians on food stamps has exceeded population growth in the state. And nationally, 2013 saw 3,556,500 Americans join onto SNAP, a 200,000 increase from the previous year. However, data demonstrating the effectiveness of the program is not readily available.

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Austin Petersen is a homegrown Missourian with a lifelong passion for liberty. He grew up on a horse farm in Peculiar, Missouri and went on to attend Missouri State University, graduating with a degree in the Fine Arts. After developing a career in media in both New York City and Washington, D.C., he returned to Kansas City, MO, the city he now calls home. In 2016, Petersen appeared on the national stage as a candidate for president of the United States. He took second place in the crowded Libertarian primary behind Governor Gary Johnson and ahead of cyber security maverick John McAfee. During his campaign, Petersen earned many high-profile conservative endorsements, including Mary Matalin, Erick Erickson and Leon Wolf of RedState.com. Petersen also brings decades of professional experience in a wide variety of fields, from content production and media to business and political activism. He is the owner and chief executive of Stonegait LLC, a consulting firm specializing in photo and video services. He was also the director of production at FreedomWorks and an associate producer for Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show “Freedom Watch” on the Fox Business Network. Additionally, Petersen has a national following as a commentator and professional pundit. He is the founder of The Libertarian Republic, a powerful online news source for the public that receives an average of 1 million unique visits monthly and whose podcast, The Freedom Report, receives an average of one million monthly downloads. He is also a frequent contributor on television, appearing on Fox News, Fox Business, CNN, MSNBC and on dozens of local radio shows.

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