Backpay – SNAP / Food Stamps for the Low Income – Snap Benefit Update 2023
SNAP benefits, otherwise known as food stamps for the low-income. I have all the details and what you need to know right here in the topic, so let’s get right into it. I know in this topic, we’re specifically talking about SNAP benefits, otherwise referred to as supplemental nutrition assistance programs, also called food stamps for the low-income and back pay or reimbursement payments that you can now get as the rules have changed. every day watching the latest details being released and breaking it all down into these short topics so you can stay posted on what’s actually happening and how it’s going to impact you, your money, your benefits, your lifestyle, your bank account, and of course, anything popping up you can possibly grab and or take advantage of.
Let’s get into it and talk about back pay and retroactive payments, otherwise known as reimbursement payments. For those of you that are receiving SNAP benefits in the event you fall into this category and if this happens to you now, I want to break down the details of this because as of the end of last year, 2022, there are some rules that have been changed. There was a massive $1.7 trillion billion dollars package, as in bill, that was passed through Congress and signed into law by the President at the end of last year, 2022, that contains some new changes for SNAP beneficiaries. And that’s what I want to break down for you because in the event that certain things happen with your SNAP benefits, you can actually get reimbursement payments.
In other words, they’ll pay you back. Okay? Not bad, right? Pretty cool stuff. However, it’s a tough situation as well. Okay? So let me talk about this. I have discussed this before in other topics as we did get the information that was released on this. But as I said, I continue to get a lot of questions on this. I want to break this down further for you. Now, as of right now, across the entire United States, there are about 43 million people who rely on SNAP benefits every single month. Now, remember, back in March a few months ago, they ended the extra allotment, making it even harder and harder for SNAP beneficiaries and the low-income to get enough necessary foods. I’ve been reading a ton of information over the last couple of months here where these food banks all across the country are seeing huge, huge surges of people coming in just trying to get enough necessary foods right now because the extra allotments stopped and food prices are very, very high right now. So it’s a super sad situation for the low-income. However, that is a totally different story. Now, let’s quickly talk about the reimbursement payments and what’s going on here.
All right, so I’m not going to get into a ton of detail as far as the whole bill and stuff like that, but I’ll tell you the details as far as what’s going on here. So basically what it comes down to, in that bill from late last year, there was a provision in there that goes back all the way to October first of 2022, and it extends out through September 30th of 2024. So it’s a two-year period of time. October first, 2022 to September 30th, 2024. It’s a two-year window. Here’s what it comes down to. We all know that over the last couple of years here, a lot of weird things have been changing, right? Well, here’s another thing as well. You know out there, we’ve probably been hearing about this. Maybe in your local news. You probably heard about it. Over the last, I mean, many years, there’s a lot of times we’ve been hearing about this out there. This is something that’s happening, and it’s been happening, unfortunately, a lot lately. And these people are focusing on SNAP beneficiaries. Again, super sad situation that this is happening, but this is the reality and the world that we’re living in now.
So we’ve got to adjust with it and do what’s necessary to protect ourselves. But what’s happening is, those little skimming devices that they put on gas pumps, you probably hear it in your local area, put it on a gas pump. When you swipe your card in there, like a credit card, a debit card, something like this, it gathers all the information, and then the people on the other side of it can take your information, basically empty out your accounts. Have you heard about these things? Yeah, you probably heard about this, right? Well, as of several months ago… Well, we’ve been hearing about a lot more as of maybe six months, eight months, something like that ago, maybe a year ago now. We’ve been hearing about this a lot more where these little skimming devices are making their ways into stores. So when you go to the checkout counter at your local grocery store or maybe one of these big box stores or something like this, maybe the little kiosk that you swipe your card into has one of these little devices on it. Not saying for sure that it does. I don’t know that for sure.
It’s different all over the country. But I’m just saying this is something that’s happening across the country. And unfortunately, when SNAP beneficiaries swipe your EBT card, a lot of that data is collected, and therefore, the people on the back end can also empty out your card and take all of your money. Not a cool situation, right? This is something that’s happening. And unfortunately, with SNAP cards or EBT cards, I should say, these cards do not have all that many protective and security measures within them. Unlike a credit card or a debit card, a lot of times these cards are very protected, right? However, EBT cards, unfortunately, do not have the security measures that a lot of these other cards do. So a lot of times it’s very easy for these people to empty out the cards and essentially take all of your money, which is why they’re targeting SNAP beneficiaries. Again, super sad that this is happening. However, with that bill that was passed at the end of last year, we can now get retroactive reimbursement payments all the way back to October first of 2022. But here’s what I would suggest. In the event that this happens to you now, again, I do not want this to happen to anybody, okay?
This is a super sad situation. This is something that’s happening. This is something that honestly is a huge headache. We don’t ever want to have to go through this. And this is something that nobody wants to deal with. But unfortunately, this is something that’s happening. So please keep this in mind in the event that this happens to you. And again, I don’t want this to happen to anybody. Our lives would be a lot easier if this just doesn’t happen to anybody. But unfortunately, this is something that’s going on right now, and I want to give you this information so that you’re aware of it. But here’s what’s happening. In the event that your information is possibly taken from one of these little skimming devices. So you go out, you buy your groceries, do whatever you need to do, and all of a sudden you go to the store again in a week or whatever, and you decide, Hey, I’m going to buy some stuff here. And you realize, Wait, my card is empty. I didn’t spend all my money. What happened to all my money? I know for a fact I did not spend it.
Or maybe you just recently got paid and you go out to buy some stuff and you realize, Wait, my card is empty. What happened? Well, maybe your data was taken and therefore, they grabbed all that money from your card. So here’s what you can do. You can now get the reimbursement payments for that money that was taken from you wrongly. Now, when I say wrongly, I mean someone literally stole the money from you. It doesn’t mean that your husband or your wife took your card and went on bought a bunch of groceries for you, or your son or your daughter or your neighbor, a friend or an acquaintance, something like that. They went and took your card and they went and bought some groceries for themselves. I’m not talking about that. That is something different. So we got to make the… There’s a very clear distinction here between somebody trying to help you out and maybe buying some things for themselves or somebody actually taking the money wrongly. There’s a big discrepancy there. So make sure that we have that hammered out there. But this is what it comes down to. So this is what they’re talking about with this retroactive and this reimbursement payment, which is we can now get that reimbursed.
Before this bill and before this provision was actually passed into law, if this happened to somebody, they basically said, sorry, there’s literally nothing we can do about this. We can’t reimburse that. There’s nothing we can do. Sorry, we can maybe get you a new card or something. But other than that, there was nothing they could do about it. But now they can reimburse those payments. Okay. So here’s what I would recommend. And again, I’ve had people asking me, this happened, or if it happens to me, what should I do about it? Here’s what you should do. Contact your local office. Now, again, here’s the tough part about SNAP. Snap is a federally funded program, but it is administered by the states. Federal government give the states money. The states distribute that money to all the beneficiaries. But here’s the problem. States all have their own different rules, their own provisions, their own sets of parameters. They have all of their different basically rules and provisions that they have to follow in order to basically reinstate these payments. So that’s why it’s tough with SNAP is because we don’t have one size fits all set of rules to basically follow and say, Okay, this is the procedure you need to follow in order to get those benefits reinstated to you. But the best thing I can say is contact your local office. If you feel that this has happened to you, contact your local office and they should be able to walk you through the steps of what you need to do to get those benefits reinstated. Now, here’s one more thing as well that I want to throw out. In some instances, they may not be able to reinstate all of the benefits. For example, let’s just say that you have $900 on your card and the people take $900 from you. That’s rough, right? That’s a bad situation. They may not be able to reinstate all $900. They may be able to give you a portion of it back, but maybe not all of it, okay?
Depends on your exact situation, depends on the severity of it, depends on the dollar amount, depends on your state that you’re located in. A lot of different factors going into play. The best thing I would say to do, contact your local office immediately. So if you feel that this has happened to you, or if this has happened to you over the last several months here since October first of 2022, if you have data to back it up, as in you can clearly see on your account, or you can clearly see that something is wrong there, as in something is very suspicious and your benefits have been taken from you, please contact your local office. They should be able to talk you through the details as far as what you need to do and to get those benefits reinstated and how to follow through with those steps. Okay? Very important stuff. But that’s what I would recommend doing. Okay? Contact your local office. They should have all the details for you. Okay? And that’s why I said each state is different. That’s the tough part about SNAP benefits and some of these other programs out there that are federally funded but state administered.
There’s no one size fits all because all the states have their own sets of rules. That’s why it’s tough with some of these programs. But that is the best thing that I can say is just call your local office, tell them the situation, and they should know about this. They should know that these benefits should be reinstated, at least, if not all of them, at least a portion of them. Now, why they wouldn’t reinstate all of the benefits? That’s just what’s in the legislation. It’s a tough thing. It doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Why? If you have $900 that’s taken, why they wouldn’t give you your $900 back? I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me. I just feel like if they’re going to reinstate something, why wouldn’t they just do the full amount? But that’s the situation that we’re dealing with. Anyway, this one I want to talk about really quickly. Yes, this is in play now. Again, it’s retroactive back to October first, 2022, quite a long time ago now. And then it goes all the way out until September 30th of 2024. And this is for those individuals who have had your SNAP benefits wrongly taken from you as a result of one of these little skimming devices on these kiosks.
When you go out to your local grocery store, you swipe your card in there, and then all of a sudden you realize, maybe a couple of days later or whatever, now all of a sudden you think, Oh, my card is empty. I know for a fact I did not spend all that money. Where did it go? And then you realize, Oh, that little kiosk did seem a little bit suspicious. When I swipe my card, something didn’t look right. They’ll probably gather a bunch of data from you. They’ll probably try to figure out where it happened, when it happened, which store you were at, things like this, to try to figure out where it is and how they can extract that, things like that. So again, you have to talk to your local office. They should be able to walk you through the steps and tell you exactly what you need to do, maybe forms that you need to fill out. I mean, it’s going to be a process. We all know that. Okay. It’s not going to be as easy as making a phone call and they’ll give you money back on your card. It’s not going to be that easy.
But hopefully it’s relatively easy to get that money back. So I hope this makes sense, but this is something that passed at the end of last year, 2022. It’s not the best thing in the world. I mean, at the end of the day, in that same bill, let me throw this out there, in the same exact bill where they passed this legislation, they also passed in there basically the ending or the cancelation, the expiration of the extra allotment that ended in March. So I mean, one hand we got a little good thing, and on one hand, they basically took a bunch of money from a bunch of people by not extending out that extra allotment. So I don’t know. Just like so many of you here in the community say, they take with one hand and they give with one hand and they take it all away with the other. I’ve seen it down below in the comments section. So yeah, that’s true. It’s what happens. Anyway, unfortunately, but this is the reality of the world that we’re living in now. So please just make sure to protect yourself. I don’t know. Again, I’ve talked about it before in other topics as well, which is they’re talking about implementing some new security measures on EBT cards, but it looks like that could be out at some point in the future in the next couple of years here.
Well, this is happening right now. This is a real-time situation. So why do we need to wait a couple more years? I don’t know. But this is what they’re talking about. Anyway, as they get more information, of course, I’ll be right here for you, breaking it all down. Share the topic with your friends, family, and social media.
