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People in Ohio, Michigan and several other states found themselves unable to buy groceries with their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine check by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena confirmed via email Saturday afternoon that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems are experiencing temporary connectivity issues. She said technical staff is addressing the issue and expects the system to be restored soon. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states and all were affected by the outage.Ohio's cash and food assistance card payment systems went down at 11 a.m., said Benjamin Johnson, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Ohio's cash system has been fixed, however he said that its electronic benefits transfer card system is still down.http://www.kwwl.com/story/23675906/food-stamp-debit-cards-not-working-in-many-states
Iowa officials have implemented an emergency plan of issuing vouchers to low-income residents after computer problems caused electronic payments for food stamps to fail across the country.The Iowa Department of Human Services says it already had a contingency plan in place for such emergencies.Iowans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and find that their electronic benefit card isn't working can fill out a voucher and receive $50 daily in food assistance. DHS says the contingency plan has no financial impact to grocers.Wendy Rickman, who administers DHS' food stamp program, says the plan makes certain that people have access to food each day
For real? [emphasis added]$50 a day? What the hell are these people eating each day? Does anyone on here spend $50 a day for their daily food?http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/Iowa-Implements-Workaround-For-Food-Stamp-Outage-227558281.html
