SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as “food stamps,” is our foremost tool for keeping low-income families and people with disabilities from going hungry.  

It’s also a deal for the states.  

The federal government pays 100% of the cost of the food benefits and 50% of the cost to administer them. SNAP not only allows us to meet a basic need for our most vulnerable citizens, but that money from the feds goes straight into our local economy as recipients purchase groceries and have funds freed up to spend on other basic needs like transportation and child care.  

Studies show that being able to access SNAP leads to a host of other upsides ranging from higher SAT scores to lower healthcare costs to increased earning power.  

In Missouri, however, we can’t have nice things.  

The administration of the SNAP program is one of a slew of examples of the state failing to get federal funds to the Missourians they are intended for.  

The Missouri Department of Social Services has turned the process of applying for SNAP into a Kafkaesque obstacle course, which a federal court ruled in May violates federal law.

Applying for SNAP involves three steps: 1. Filing an application. 2. Having an interview. 3. Submitting verifications of income, assets, disability status, household characteristics, etc.

Federal court rules Missourians were illegally denied food aid by the state

Missouri has drastically reduced the ability to complete any of these steps in person, instead routing applicants to a call center where people regularly wait on hold for hours only to have their call “deflected,” which is DSS’s euphemism for “dropped.” 

People stay on hold for hours multiple days in a row without ever reaching a human for an interview. Then DSS denies the application for failure to complete the interview that DSS has failed to give them. Some months, more than half of those denied benefits are denied not because they were ineligible but because they didn’t complete the interview they couldn’t get.

One of the plaintiffs in the SNAP lawsuit, Mary Holmes — who has throat cancer and COPD and doesn’t have internet or transportation — spent hours on hold over many days using up her prepaid cell phone minutes just to ask for an application.  

The automated system has no option to request that one be mailed to you. Holmes ultimately paid someone for a ride to a DSS office where she was able to file an application but was told there was no staff to interview her. Then she spent more days on hold trying and failing to get an interview before having her application denied for not having an interview.

Others who can’t reach anyone at the call center go to DSS in person only to be pointed to a phone and told to call the call center.       

The details in the lawsuit paint a picture of such shocking incompetence (or deliberate malfeasance?) that you’d think Gov. Mike Parson and his DSS director, Robert Knodell, would be embarrassed. 

It is baffling that they would defend this lawsuit rather than seeking to settle it by fixing the problem.

Instead, the state has doubled down, letting the call center remain a mess for the two years since the lawsuit was filed while making unsound arguments in court that the plaintiffs don’t have standing to sue and that DSS is immune from litigation.  

Now, Attorney General Andrew Bailey has appealed even though there isn’t even a final judgment to appeal from. All the lower court has done so far is order the state to develop a remedial plan and file monthly reports on wait times and dropped calls. But instead of trying to remedy the problem, our officials are spending taxpayer dollars to continue fighting for the right not to fulfill their legal obligations to Missourians.

This is part of a pattern.  

Missouri children are losing Medicaid coverage at rate that is alarming pediatricians

Daycares are closing because the state can’t manage to get federal child care subsidies disbursed, even though the governor has claimed dealing with the child care crisis is a priority.  

Missouri’s worst-in-the nation wait times for Medicaid applications and renewals have drawn a federal investigation. Missouri kids are finding out at the pediatrician’s office that they’ve been kicked off Medicaid and getting sicker from manageable conditions.  

The DOJ found that Missouri is unnecessarily institutionalizing thousands of adults with mental illness in inappropriate nursing homes in violation of federal law.  

The state takes federal disability and survivorship benefits owed to foster care children despite bipartisan support for a bill that would have ended the practice.  

I don’t understand why these aren’t major scandals. Instead, each failure is met with officials shrugging and pointing the finger at somebody else: The closing day cares are a contractor’s fault. Medicaid wait times are due to understaffing and antiquated computers. The SNAP call center is overburdened because applicants are choosing the wrong menu option.  

In the SNAP case, Judge Douglass Harpool essentially said, “figure it out.”  

He acknowledged that there are many demands for the state’s resources, but found it “a challenge” to believe the state can’t administer a program where the federal government pays all of the benefits and at least half of the administrative cost. This is especially so, he noted, given that Missouri has received additional pandemic funds from the federal government, and cut taxes while the SNAP program has been inadequately administered.  

In fact, the federal government barred states from using COVID funds for tax cuts. But that’s hard to enforce because money is fungible, so Missouri did it anyway.  

Furthermore, Missouri has rejected opportunities to streamline the eligibility process. We are one of only nine states not to have implemented “broad-based categorical eligibility.” Instead, the legislature gave lip service to solving the problem of recipients losing benefits due to meager pay increases by creating a convoluted new program that was never implemented because it wasn’t funded and would have required DSS to build a whole new system to administer it on top of the already broken one.

There is just no excuse for this.

I was surprised to learn recently that the famous sign on Harry Truman’s desk reading “The Buck Stops Here,” says “I’m from Missouri” on the back. These days, the “Show-Me State”  looks more like the “Pass the Buck State” to me.  

Poor people aren’t politically powerful. So it’s easy for officials to throw up their hands at the rampant mismanagement and neglect that is depriving them of federal support they are owed.  

But we all ought to demand more from our elected officials and political candidates. Minimally competent governance is not too much to ask.