for U.S. Congress

Madison - Federal officials are threatening to withhold new money and take back previous funds for Wisconsin's food assistance program if state officials don't scale back efforts to privatize it.

The letter from federal officials follows an April visit to Wisconsin by U.S. Department of Agriculture staff and goes a step further than similar past warnings by saying the state FoodShare program is already in violation of federal rules because of the privatization efforts by two governors.
Federal officials are also separately questioning a new privatization proposal put forward by Republican Gov. Scott Walker for FoodShare, the successor program to food stamps.
In a Wednesday letter to state Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith, Ollice Holden, a Midwest administrator for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, warned that Wisconsin had overstepped boundaries laid out for the state last year. Failing to fix the problem could lead USDA to suspend payments to the state for administering FoodShare and seek to recover certain money already paid to Wisconsin, he said.