Here is the lead story in today’s LA Times:
More than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami.
….Las Vegas drew $11.8 million of the cash benefits, far more than any other destination. The money was accessed from January 2007 through May 2010….The $387,908 accessed in Hawaii includes transactions at more than a thousand big-box stores, grocery stores, convenience shops and ATMs on all the major islands.
When I read this, I immediately wondered how far the Times would make me read before they told me just how big a percentage of total welfare payments this represents. Let’s count.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18….ah, here it is. Paragraph 18, buried deep on page A11 in my print edition:
The out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1% of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered, and advocates note that there are legitimate reasons to spend aid money outside of California. From the data provided, it cannot be determined whether any of the expenditures resulted from fraud.
So Vegas/Hawaii/Miami accounts for about 0.11% of total welfare expenditures. Total out-of-state spending accounts for 0.63% of all spending, but as paragraph 18 notes, quite a bit of it is probably legit (“Many recipients travel to other states in an emergency such as a death in the family,” we learn in paragraph 24). So figure the total amount of fraud is probably well south of 0.5%.
All fraud is bad fraud, and if welfare payments are being used fraudulently then they should be weeded out. But I gotta say, if over 99.5% of welfare payment are being used properly, that’s a helluva well run program.
