Texas Botches SNAP, Democrats Desperate for Actors, Texas Energy Wins, Harrison in Fauci Diary!
Monitoring the Situation (7/30/26)
No situations were resolved in the making of this newsletter. They were only monitored.
Texas Bureaucrats Botched SNAP Costing us $2.1 Billion
Democrat Casting Call Sounds Desperate
Brian Harrison Shows Up in the Fauci Diary
Texas Beats California on Green Policy Without Even Trying
Texas Bureaucrats Botched SNAP So Badly It'll Cost You $2.1 Billion
State officials showed up to a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday and calmly explained that Texas’ inability to fill out a form correctly is about to cost you the price of a pro football stadium.
KAMR:
During a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, Texas Health and Human Services Commission officials told lawmakers the state could owe between $1.7 billion and $2.1 billion during the 2028-29 budget cycle
Between. They’re not even sure how big the hole is yet, and this is from the state that never shuts up about fiscal responsibility.
Watch the number move. In April, HHSC told the Legislature the damage was $826 million: a $709 million federal penalty unless Texas gets its error rate under 6 percent by October 2027, plus $117 million a year in new administrative costs. In June, USDA published fresh error rates. By Tuesday, the estimate for one budget cycle was $2.1 billion. Every time this agency testifies, the invoice gets bigger.
The mechanism:
While SNAP benefits have historically been fully funded by the federal government, the law requires states to begin paying a share of benefit costs based on their payment error rates and increases states’ share of administrative expenses.
So the feds finally said: you run the program, you eat your own mistakes. Under the new rules, a state that keeps its error rate under 6 percent pays zero dollars toward benefits. Texas’ rate is nearly 9.
The national average is 10.62 percent, but the free tier starts at 6.
HHSC Swears the Screwups Aren’t “Fraud”
Before you get any ideas, the agency would like you to know that a multi-billion-dollar error rate is definitely not what it sounds like.
HHSC Commissioner Stephanie Muth told lawmakers the agency is working to lower Texas' payment error rate but stressed the figure should not be confused with fraud.
Not fraud. Just incompetence, at scale, on your dime.
It’s also a rerun. In April, Muth told the same building that Texas “has been a national leader in the proactive steps that we’ve taken.” That was the $826 million hearing. The national leadership has since grown to $2.1 billion.
Same script we heard on broadband, on DEI contracting, on the EBTpocalypse. The bureaucracy fumbles, the taxpayer covers the fumble, and a commissioner assures the committee it’s all under control.
It is not under control. It is $2.1 billion!
Send the invoice to whoever signed off on the error rate.
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Democrat Casting Call Sounds Desperate
A casting call for “multigenerational African or Latin American” families for an unnamed Democratic campaign comes off as a bit desperate:
