"Like attorneys who comb through the tax code looking for loopholes to exploit for wealthy clients, clever state officials browsing through food-stamp rules..."

"... have figured out a way to game the program for their poorest citizens. The trick — called 'heat and eat' — is to give someone with no actual heating bill a token amount of home heating assistance — as little as $1 a year in some states, or a single dime a year in California. Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., use the gimmick to extract billions of dollars in extra federal food-stamp benefits that their citizens aren't really entitled to under the rules...."

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