
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 12, 1994                   TAG: 9404120133
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

1991'S $1 BILLION ERROR LOW BY WELFARE FRAUD STANDARDS

Welfare recipients were overpaid $1 billion in 1991 because of fraud and mistakes by state agencies and the families collecting monthly benefits, according to a federal survey.

The survey also found that thousands of other poor families with children were improperly denied welfare benefits by state and county workers responsible for deciding eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

The survey by the Department of Health and Human Services measures mistakes by agency employees and fraud and errors by welfare recipients. It found that overpayments accounted for $1 billion of the $20.7 billion paid to low-income families in 1991, an error rate of 4.96 percent and the lowest on record.

In 1991, Virginia overpaid $6.8 million in AFDC, an error rate of 3.39 percent.

Conservative welfare experts say the survey fails to measure more sophisticated or hard-to-catch fraud by recipients who work off the books or by using fake IDs, hide assets, claim fictitious children or collect benefits in two locations.

But liberals complain that caseworkers put more effort into keeping errors down than helping single mothers on welfare become self-sufficient.

The question of welfare fraud is especially sensitive as the Clinton administration drafts a plan to pump billions of new dollars into the welfare system to help low-income mothers get the skills, education and child care they need to get off welfare and into the work force.

Efforts to fight welfare fraud are rarely mentioned in the administration's draft plans to overhaul AFDC. And the Clinton administration on April 1 began cutting back the federal government's share of the cost of investigating both AFDC and food stamp fraud.

In addition to the overpayments, the government's survey shows that tens of thousands of families were improperly denied benefits, including 15,057 in Texas, 13,266 in Florida and 11,955 in California.

"If you have mistakes in both directions - deserving people losing out and people who are undeserving taking advantage and exploiting the system - it undermines your ability to show that the government can really use resources wisely and implement overall reform," said Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the House Small Business subcommittee on regulation.

by CNB