TheDC Investigation: Universities encouraging students to receive welfare benefits

If you think that increase is comprised mostly of hard-luck single moms and laid-off auto workers, that doesn’t exactly seem to be the case. While the USDA doesn’t keep records by occupation, many new food stamps recipients clearly are students, according to campus news accounts from across the country.

[SEE: Food stamps are pretty easy to get]

That doesn’t surprise Cato Institute budget analyst Tad DeHaven. “The federal government and, by extension, the state governments who oversee the programs, it’s impossible for them to accurately determine who needs it and who doesn’t need it,” DeHaven told TheDC. “With students, they don’t take into consideration student loan subsidies. They might be getting family income, assets and stuff like that. So, it’s quite frankly easy to get them.”

As government works to remove the traditional stigma associated with receiving welfare, DeHaven expects the food stamp program to continue to grow dramatically. “If you get the mentality that, ‘well, so and so is getting their share, so I should get my share as well,’” he says. “It’s a quintessential example of people endeavoring to live at the expense of other people.”