The rollout of the Obamacare exchange has been such a failure that there is now a website devoted to documenting how badly the administration is missing its enrollment goals nationwide.

And, as Maple Woods College student Alex Braud notes, that isn’t the only big government technical glitch costing taxpayers big time.

A routine check by Xerox Corp. resulted in residents of 17 states including Ohio, Michigan and Illinois being unable to use their food stamp EBT cards on Saturday. Xerox spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer issued a statement saying “beneficiaries in the 17 affected states continue to experience connectivity issues to access their benefits,” despite the system being up and running. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe stated the difficulties were not related to the government shutdown.

Continued glitches on Sunday led to shoppers in some Louisiana Walmart stores emptying shelves as if it were Black Friday. Stores in Springhill and Mansfield, LA, let EBT customers buy without spending limits as stores were flooded and shelves emptied “worse than any Black Friday,” Springhill Police Chief Will Lynd told KSLA-TV. Riots in Mississippi resulted in customers leaving the store without paying even after the system had gone back online.

But who is going to pay for this? Will it be the taxpayers? Shoppers? Walmart? Didn’t these people realize what they were doing was wrong? It is nothing more than theft. An economics teacher once taught me the phrase TINSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Do people really think they are getting free food? Clearly some people think they are getting free healthcare. And free phones. And free housing. Don’t they understand somebody is paying for that? I understand that there are many people who rely on food stamps to feed their families. I will even admit that I used food stamps for a time in my life. But, I was working 40 hours a week to pay my bills and didn’t have much left over. But, I had a limit and knew my limit and only spent it on basic food staples that I needed. As Dave Ramsey puts it, I was living off “rice and beans and beans and rice.”

….It is extremely unfortunate that people are so desperate that they would essentially steal hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. Is it really their fault? Possibly. If they have any sense of moral guidance, then they should know stealing is wrong. But, does our current political climate encourage this desperation? Our lawmakers need to stop arguing and come to the table and work out a compromised solution to turn the economy around.