USDA's SNAP-fraud penalty rule has sat unfinished since 2012
Summary
USDA has had the legal authority to raise monetary penalties on retailers who traffic SNAP benefits -- exchanging them for cash instead of food -- since the 2008 Farm Bill. In August 2012, the department proposed a rule to do exactly that, citing the need to improve program integrity and deter violations. GAO's July 6, 2026 letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins found the rule still hasn't been finalized, and estimates that finalizing it would assess an additional $174 million a year in trafficking penalties. It's one of three priority areas GAO flagged for USDA, alongside stalled IT-modernization planning in its Farm Production and Conservation mission area -- on GAO's High-Risk List -- and a data-sharing gap that limits national-security review of foreign investment in U.S. farmland. USDA's overall recommendation follow-through outpaces the government: an 82% five-year implementation rate versus a 77% government-wide average GAO reported the same month. But the backlog is still growing at the top: USDA carries 110 open recommendations, including 6 GAO calls priority, up from 5 in June 2025 even after USDA closed two.
A 2012 rule, still not final
In August 2012, USDA proposed regulatory changes⧉, including a new trafficking penalty, saying they were necessary to improve program integrity and deter retailers from committing violations. never finalized the rule. estimates that increasing the penalties, as it has recommended, would assess an additional $174 million per year in new trafficking penalties -- money that, under the current penalty structure, isn't being collected.
IT plans and farmland data are the other two priorities
's other two priority areas for are narrower but still unresolved. In its Farm Production and Conservation mission area⧉, has yet to develop and publish a strategic IT plan with metrics to reduce duplication and overlap -- a gap 's IT-modernization work has placed on its government-wide High-Risk List. Separately, recommended share more timely and detailed data collected under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, so the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States can catch land transactions -- including near sensitive military bases -- that it might otherwise miss.
Follow-through elsewhere outpaces the government -- but the backlog still grew
None of this reflects a department that ignores 's recommendations generally. GAO reported in January 2026⧉ that 77% of its recommendations made five years earlier had been implemented government-wide; 's own five-year rate was 82%. But the priority list is still growing at the top: as of May 2026, carried 110 open recommendations, including 6 designates priority -- up from 5 in its June 2025 letter, even after fully implemented 2 of those in the interim; added 3 new priority recommendations along the way.
View data as table
| Government-wide | 77% |
|---|---|
| USDA | 82% |
View data as table
| June 2025 | 5 |
|---|---|
| May 2026 | 6 |
View data as table
| Priority | 6 |
|---|---|
| Other open | 104 |
The takeaway
- A 2012 rule to raise fraud penalties is still not final. has had the legal authority since the 2008 Farm Bill and proposed acting on it in August 2012; estimates finalizing it would assess $174 million a year in additional trafficking penalties that currently go uncollected.
- Two smaller priorities point the same direction: plans not finished, data not shared. 's Farm Production and Conservation mission area still lacks a published IT strategic plan -- a High-Risk List item -- and hasn't been sharing foreign-farmland-investment data promptly enough for national-security reviewers to catch transactions they'd otherwise miss.
- closes recommendations faster than the government overall, but the priority backlog is still growing. An 82% five-year implementation rate beats the 77% government-wide average, yet 's priority-recommendation count rose from 5 to 6 between June 2025 and May 2026 even as two were closed, and 110 recommendations remain open in total.
All findings are from -26-109000, "Priority Open Recommendations: U.S. Department of Agriculture," a letter from Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dated July 6, 2026 -- read directly in full. This is part of 's annual priority-open-recommendations letter series, begun in 2015; the underlying audits cites (on trafficking penalties, FPAC IT modernization, and AFIDA data sharing) were not separately re-verified here.
Sources(1) ▾
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, Priority Open Recommendations: U.S. Department of Agriculture (2026-07-06) — -26-109000, letter from Acting Comptroller General Orice Williams Brown to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, dated July 6, 2026 -- the annual priority-open-recommendations letter for . Read the full 2-page letter directly (extracted with pdftotext -layout); the Highlights/Fast-Facts summary the Artemis capture stored omits the $174 million trafficking-penalty estimate, the 2012 rule-proposal date, and the 82%-vs-77% implementation-rate comparison, all of which are only in the letter body. Direct gao.gov PDF asset access intermittently returns HTTP 403 and the Wayback save endpoint was rate-limited (HTTP 429) at capture time; the Artemis-sealed copy of the product page serves as the one-click capture. gao.gov · original document
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has had the legal authority to raise monetary penalties on retailers who traffic benefits -- swapping them for cash instead of food -- since the 2008 Farm Bill⧉. 's July 6, 2026 priority-recommendations letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins found that authority still hasn't been used.