Goodbye to food stamps: What could happen if the U.S. government stops paying for SNAP benefits

Millions of Americans will lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits starting 1 November with the US Department of Agriculture saying “the well has run dry.”

Despite calls from Democratic lawmakers to use contingency funds to prop up the food assistance program, Secretary Brooke Rollins said that those need to be kept on hand for “true emergencies,” such as natural disasters.

American families and grocery stores could be facing a dire situation in November

The federal government shutdown, due to an impasse over Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid funding, began on 1 October and is now the second longest in US history. The closure has resulted in the furloughing of hundreds of thousands of federal employees and stopped paychecks to roughly 1.4 million of them.

While the USDA warned that an extended shutdown could jeopardize SNAP benefits, it posted a new message on its website saying that “at this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01.” The message also contains a highly partisan statement, something that is illegal under the Hatch Act, blaming Democrats for the stoppage of payments.

Roughly 42 million Americans, or one in eight, rely on the SNAP benefits, which provide funds to buy nutritional food. Many have already expressed their fears that they will not be able to afford necessary food items to feed their children.

Some states are planning to cover the shortfall of government funds with money from their own coffers. However, the USDA warned them that they will not be reimbursed for any money that they send to SNAP recipients to cover the federal government’s share.

Affected SNAP recipients will have to find alternative ways to put food on the table in food banks and other meal programs while the funding lapse continues. Feeding America provides help finding local food banks on its website.

There are also concerns that the lack of SNAP benefits on recipient’s EBT cards will also cause hardship for local grocery stores and could have reverberations throughout the supply chain.

Democrats say the White House is “unlawfully stealing benefits from Americans”

Democratic US Representatives Rosa DeLauro and Angie Craig published a joint statement last week saying that “Congress already provided billions of dollars to fund SNAP in November.”

“This is perhaps the most cruel and unlawful offense the Trump administration has perpetrated yet – freezing funding already enacted into law to feed hungry Americans while he shovels tens of billions of dollars out the door to Argentina and into his ballroom,” the congresswomen stated.

“The president, his agriculture secretary, and his budget director need to stop playing politics with Americans struggling to afford food and release the SNAP funds that Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate overwhelmingly voted to provide,” they added.

Furthermore, that there are billions in SNAP’s contingency fund and that “the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has made it clear that these funds can be used during a lapse in appropriations.”

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