Simplified reporting will increase welfare fraud and errors

• The solution to avoiding federal Food Stamp penalties isn’t to weaken the rules by reverting back to the failed policy of simplified reporting. It’s to actually follow the law.

A barrage of news reports and public statements by lawmakers, including by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, have created the impression that the best way to reduce error rates in Mississippi’s Food Stamp program is to ask recipients for less information regarding eligibility. This is what is called “simplified reporting.” The alternative is to require more ongoing eligibility information, or what is called “change reporting.” 

No one seems to be arguing that simplified reporting is a wise policy or a strategy that will reduce fraud – perhaps because checking eligibility information less often will obviously increase opportunities for fraud. Instead, they are claiming that Mississippi should use simplified reporting because we must reduce our error rate, and the reason we must reduce our error rate is to avoid new federal penalties related to high Food Stamp error rates. This argument relies on an unproven and demonstrably false assumption – namely, that using simplified reporting will actually reduce Mississippi’s Food Stamp error rate. Suppose it doesn’t?

Granted, Mississippi is the only state in the nation not to use any form of simplified reporting. Mississippi uses only change reporting thanks to legislation I sponsored in 2017 called The Hope Act. The reason we only use change reporting is because, when implemented properly, it reduces fraud in welfare programs. Simplified reporting is bad policy because it allows benefits to continue unchanged for 6 months, even after eligibility has changed. That may reduce paperwork for government bureaucrats, but it almost always leads to larger overpayments and bigger problems later. More errors – not less.

Nineteen states use a combination of change reporting and simplified reporting. If change reporting caused, or even correlated with, a high Food Stamp error rate, wouldn’t Mississippi have the highest error rate in the country?

But we don’t. The latest available data indicates Mississippi’s error rate is 10.69 percent. The national average is 10.93. Mississippi’s error rate is below the national average – even though we are the only state that only uses change reporting. By contrast, neighboring states that only use simplified reporting – Florida (15.13) and Georgia (15.65), for example – have much higher error rates.

Based on this data, it could be argued that change reporting doesn’t particularly affect our error rate one way or another, especially if the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) were doing a great job cross-checking eligibility in other ways. The opposite is the case, however, which suggests change reporting may be one of the only practices keeping our error rate down.

A recent report out of Kansas raises even more doubts that switching to simplified reporting will reduce Mississippi’s Food Stamp error rate. An April 2026 Performance Audit by the Kansas Legislature concludes:

Even with limited data we found instances where recipients may have received benefits after potentially moving from the state. This violates federal and state law which require that a recipient live in the state where they receive benefits. As a simplified reporting state, federal law only requires recipients to immediately report changes in wages, hours worked, and lottery winnings. Recipients are only required to notify DCF [Department of Children and Families] of a move out-of-state at the 6-month report and the 12-month certification. Until October 2025 this information was self-reported by recipients and DCF did not routinely require documentation. This made it difficult for DCF to proactively identify recipients who have moved out of state. For example, we saw one case where an individual received benefits for 21 months after potentially moving from Kansas. However, as a simplified reporting state, the federal government does not permit DCF to require SNAP recipients to report a change of address at the time of that change.

To translate – because of simplified reporting, Kansas’ welfare agency is unable to determine something as basic as when a Food Stamp recipient moves out of state. As a result, the state is illegally providing welfare benefits to people who don’t live in Kansas.

If Mississippi were to switch to simplified reporting, the same thing would happen here. More fraud, not less. Higher error rates, not lower. 

In 2017, I worked with my colleagues Rep. Jason White, Rep. Joey Hood, Senator Kevin Blackwell and Senator Brice Wiggins to pass the Hope Act. In addition to eliminating “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” simplified reporting, our bill required MDHS to run commonsense eligibility checks aimed at removing “dead” people from the rolls, as well as out-of-state fraudsters.

While the Hope Act required MDHS to use modern income-verification tools for all enrollees, it recently came out that the Department only just began piloting income verification — and only in two counties — nearly eight years after the law required it.

The HOPE Act also required the state to use third-party systems that automatically confirm wages and catch discrepancies early. Reporting and verification were meant to work together.

That matters. Without proper verification, caseworkers are forced to rely largely on self-reported information. Changes go unconfirmed or unprocessed. Errors pile up. And eventually, those mistakes show up in federal audits.

About two-thirds of Mississippi’s Food Stamp errors come from unreported changes in income or circumstances. Some are using that fact to argue that change reporting is the problem. But eliminating change reporting doesn’t eliminate errors — it just lets these errors linger and build up, backfiring in the end.

The solution to avoiding federal Food Stamp penalties isn’t to weaken the rules by reverting back to the failed policy of simplified reporting. It’s to actually follow the law.