USDA

SNAP

JD Vance

Vice President JD Vance told a crowd at a campaign event for Representative Zach Nunn in Iowa that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had uncovered widespread fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the federal food assistance program that serves roughly 42 million Americans at a cost of <a href="https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-the-federal-government-spend-on-snap-every-year/country/united-states/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">$101.7 billion per year</a>.
Vance, who President Trump named the administration's "fraud czar" to oversee investigations into waste and abuse in federal benefits, said that USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins had briefed him on the findings.
<blockquote>
 "[She] found out that we've got 355,000 people on SNAP benefits receiving double benefits, that we've got 186,000 dead people getting SNAP benefits." said&nbsp;Vance at a&nbsp; campaign event in Iowa.
</blockquote>
He repeated the figure for emphasis.
<blockquote>
 "186,000 dead Americans getting food stamps right now."
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
 "I actually think that we should take food stamps away from dead people. I think that's a reasonable thing."
</blockquote>
Vance also <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/4556493/vance-186k-dead-people-snap-benefits/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">mentioned at the event</a> that the USDA had found SNAP benefits going to people who own luxury vehicles like Lamborghinis, arguing that wealthy individuals should not be receiving food assistance.
<h2 id="what-we-actually-know">What we actually know</h2>
The specific numbers Vance cited have not been independently verified. <a href="https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/11/18/usda-snap-fraud/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Snopes noted</a> that the USDA has not provided public access to the data underlying Secretary Rollins' claims, leaving the figures unconfirmed by independent reviewers.
What is established is that SNAP has a documented history of improper payments. The Government Accountability Office and USDA's own inspector general have repeatedly flagged problems with states failing to verify recipient eligibility, cross-reference enrollment across state lines, or remove deceased individuals from benefit rolls in a timely manner. <a href="https://www.deseret.com/politics/2026/05/10/how-much-fraud-is-there-in-snap/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Deseret News reported</a> that SNAP benefits have been revoked for millions of Americans in the face of these fraud allegations.
The structural problem is real even if the specific numbers remain unverified. SNAP is administered by individual states, each running its own enrollment and verification systems. Cross-referencing between state databases and the Social Security Administration's death records is inconsistent, delayed, and in many cases manual. That creates gaps where benefits continue flowing to people who have died, moved states, or enrolled more than once.
<h3 id="trending-on-thestreet-roundtable">Trending on TheStreet Roundtable</h3>
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<h2 id="the-context">The context</h2>
Vance's fraud claims arrive during a period of historic cuts to the program.
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," signed into law in 2025, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/08/trumps-spending-bill-cuts-billions-in-snap-benefits.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">reduced SNAP funding by approximately $186 billion over ten years</a>, a 20% cut that represents the largest reduction in the program's history.
The impact has already been felt. Nearly <a href="https://www.livenowfox.com/news/how-many-people-lost-snap-benefits-one-big-beautiful-bill" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">4.3 million Americans lost SNAP benefits</a> between January 2025 and January 2026. Starting in 2027, most states will be required to cover between 5% and 15% of SNAP benefit costs, with the percentage tied to their payment error rates.
The administration frames these measures as cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse. Critics, including the <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/blog/administration-wont-spend-all-snap-funds-it-says-are-available-leading-to-deep-benefit-cuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Center on Budget and Policy Priorities</a> and <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/social-policy/explainer-understanding-snap-program-and-what-cuts" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Harvard Kennedy School researchers</a>, argue that the cuts disproportionately affect the lowest-income families and that the fraud narrative is being used to justify reductions that go far beyond eliminating waste.
Both things can be true at the same time. The system can have real fraud problems and the political response to those problems can be disproportionate. What matters for this is the underlying infrastructure question: why does the federal government not have a system that can verify, in real time, whether a benefits recipient is alive, eligible, and enrolled in only one state?
<h2 id="blockchain-was-built-for-this-problem">Blockchain was built for this problem</h2>
This is where the crypto becomes relevan.
Every problem Vance described, dead people receiving benefits, recipients enrolled in multiple states simultaneously, inability to verify eligibility in real time, is a data infrastructure problem. Specifically, it is a problem of fragmented databases, poor cross-referencing, and the absence of a shared, tamper-proof source of truth across 50 different state-run systems.
<a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Blockchain-based</a> identity verification was designed to solve exactly this class of problem.
A blockchain-based <a href="https://www.dock.io/post/blockchain-identity-management" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">identity management system</a> would allow each benefits recipient to hold a verifiable digital credential tied to a unique, cryptographically secured identity. That identity could be checked against a death registry, against enrollment databases in other states, and against eligibility criteria, all in real time, all without exposing personally identifiable information to every agency in the chain.
The technology is called self-sovereign identity. It lets a person prove specific facts about themselves, like that they are alive, that they reside in a particular state, or that their income falls below a threshold, without revealing their Social Security number, date of birth, or home address to every system that needs to verify them. The verification happens cryptographically, and the proof is recorded on an immutable ledger that no single state agency can alter or lose.
This is just not theoretical. Governments are already doing it in other domains. Georgia <a href="https://consensys.io/blockchain-use-cases/digital-identity" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">registered over 1.5 million land titles on a blockchain</a> to eliminate property disputes. Estonia runs its entire digital government infrastructure, including healthcare records, tax filings, and identity verification, on a blockchain backbone called <a href="https://e-estonia.com/solutions/security-and-safety/ksi-blockchain/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">KSI Blockchain</a>. India's Aadhaar system, while not blockchain-native, demonstrates that a single identity layer serving over a billion people is technically feasible.
<h2 id="why-it-has-not-happened-yet">Why it has not happened yet</h2>
The honest answer is that the U.S. government is not built to adopt this kind of infrastructure quickly. Federal benefits systems run on legacy technology, some of it decades old. State agencies operate independently. Procurement cycles are long. Political will to invest in new infrastructure competes with political will to simply cut spending.
And the crypto industry has not helped itself. Years of scams, hacks, and speculative excess have made "blockchain" a politically toxic word in many government circles, even as the underlying technology has matured significantly.&nbsp;
The passage of the <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">Clarity Act</a> through the Senate Banking Committee last week may begin to change that perception, but institutional trust takes time.

Vice President JD Vance reveals 186,000 dead people getting food stamps

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