Kelly channels Biden with SNAP data refusal

Kansas News Service

When someone in America asks the government for information and they’re told instead to go pound sand, the logical question is “why?”

That’s why something doesn’t smell right in Governor Laura Kelly’s refusal to provide data on Kansas’ federally-paid food welfare program to the USDA officials who are supposed to be keeping track of it.

At worst, Kelly’s refusal to provide program data on the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program gives the appearance that something nefarious is going on inside the Kansas program – benefits purposefully being paid to ineligible recipients or illegal aliens, funds siphoned off for inappropriate purposes, etc. At best, it smacks of another Democrat governor tantrum, purposefully holding up the Trump agenda to “DOGE” the books on a wide range of federal spending in order to deny the administration gaining any more feathers in its cap for accountability and competence headed into future elections.

Politics, in other words.

Either way, Kelly’s refusal to provide USDA the Kansas data saying it contains “personal information” is suspicious and inappropriate – the equivalent of saying a driver isn’t obligated to hand over his operator’s license, insurance and vehicle registration to a cop on a traffic stop because it includes “personal information.”

This excuse, coming from Kelly through Department for Children and Families head Laura Howard, is simple hogwash. It’s part of a tragic sense of entitlement that has swept the country in Democrat quarters – this idea that once government provides something (paid for by us taxpayers who bankroll “the government”) that the gift is sovereign and never ending; that it can’t be touched or questioned even by the authorities who granted it; that it belongs to the recipient for ever and ever, amen.

Benefits paid through the SNAP program to the needy are 100 percent funded by those who pay federal taxes, and the administrative costs of getting those benefits to the folks in need are shared 50/50 by taxpayers at the state and federal level. Like all federally-funded programs those costs ballooned over the years and saw wild swings during Covid: $265 million in 2019 climbing to $559 million in 2022 then down to $428 million last year according to Kansas Action for Children and the Kansas Health Institute. Though it’s been a ridiculous concept until the coming of Donald Trump, the federal government now operates under a mantra that the spending of federal tax dollars should be scrutinized and accounted for – like private businesses do.

 That scrutiny requires information to analyze. But Kelly and Howard have all kinds of excuses why USDA can’t review the Kansas data, all leading to a great big goose egg.

American voters opted for a more responsible approach to government when they elected Donald Trump president. Kansans who pay both federal and state taxes – and whole lot of them who pay neither – voted overwhelmingly for a move toward that accountability.

Kelly’s obfuscation regarding data on hundreds of millions of tax dollars harkens back to the dark days of Joe Biden graft, deceit and corruption. She should stop the nonsense and let USDA do its job.