For the "Robbing Peter to pay Paul does not butter Leo's bread" file:
Federal officials said Thursday that Indiana will be rewarded for having fewer errors in its food stamp program a year after the state was fined for making too many mistakes, including underpaying some food stamp recipients and overpaying others.
[. . .]
USDA Undersecretary Kevin Concannon said Indiana will receive a $1.6 million bonus from the agency because of its progress.
[. . .]
Last year, the federal government fined the state $1.2 million for its poor performance on food-stamp payments. However, the state decided to take an option it had to apply half the amount of the penalty toward efforts to improve food- stamp processing.
Follow that? When the state makes too many food stamp errors, which wastes our money, the federal government makes the state send it $1.2 million -- that would be our money, too, going from the state's pocket to the federal pocket. When the state then reduces the errors, wasting less of our money, the federal government takes $1.6 out of the federal pocket to put in the state pocket. No matter what happens, our money just goes back and forth from one government pocket to the other.
