One-third of population of Puerto Rico now getting federal food stamps

According to new data, the U.S. taxpayer is forking out more than $2 billion a year to provide food stamps to citizens of Puerto Rico last year, and what's worse, as much as 25 percent of the aid is untraceable because it is distributed in cash and there's "no way to verify that funds are spent on food," the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.

The money is used to provide more than one-third of the Puerto Rican population with food stamps, the USDA says, mostly through the Nutrition Assistance Program (NAP). A portion of the total includes money for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or what is more popularly known as the 2009 "economic stimulus" package, which cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and in which $165 million went to fund food stamps for the Caribbean nation.

High unemployment, low standard of living

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