Congressman Randy Neugebauer Says People Are Abusing The Food Stamps Program [AUDIO]

On Monday's edition of Lubbock's First News, Congressman Randy Neugebauer spoke with Tom Collins and Laura Mac about the current state of the Farm Bill.

Yesterday, the 2012 Farm Bill expired without an extension. However, Neugebauer reassured farmers that the coverage they received on the Farm Bill will continue through the end of the year. Neugebauer hopes that the Farm Bill for next year will become a much bigger topic after the election season has ended.

Neugebauer said that they are a lot of competing interests when it comes to the Farm Bill, and that it is not so much a "farm" bill as it is a "nutrition" bill, with over 80% of the bill dealing with food stamps. Neugebauer said he is not against helping those who truly cannot help themselves, but worries that the program is getting abused by people who really don't need the food stamps program.

One of the things that I'm concerned about is the fact that if you qualify for one program, in some cases, you're automatically put on food stamps with no test of whether you qualify for food stamps or not. We're actually paying bonus money to people to go out and sign people up for food stamps...there are people out there who cannot help themselves, but what I'm afraid of is that we've gotten so liberal with the qualifications for that, that we've got a lot of people that are probably on food stamps that shouldn't be.

You can listen to Congressman Randy Neugebauer Mondays at 7:35 during Lubbock's First News on NewsTalk 790 KFYO.