SNAP cuts hurt families and small businesses: “You can’t take away from the most needy people in the country”
As the SNAP food-stamps scheme prepares to resume full operation, industry experts have laid into the U.S. government’s shutdown stance on the program.
Stakeholders in the food sector have lambasted the Trump administration’s shutdown stance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as beneficiaries of the anti-hunger scheme prepare to receive their full November payments at last.
“A lack of empathy”
“You can’t take away from the most needy people in the country,” Pittsburgh businessman Ryan Sprankle, whose family owns three grocery stores, told the Associated Press this week. “It’s inhumane.”
Sprankle added: “It’s a lack of empathy and it’s on all their hands.”
“Millions of Americans hungry and in limbo”
Meanwhile, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), a major nutrition-advocacy group, said in a statement on Wednesday: “It remains shocking that the administration did everything it could during the shutdown to keep much needed food assistance from reaching those in need.
“USDA [the U.S.’s Department of Agriculture] could have, and should have, acted decisively to ensure that SNAP benefits continued uninterrupted.
“Instead, the administration went as far as the Supreme Court - to keep SNAP benefits out of the hands of those in need. This unnecessary and harmful decision left millions of Americans hungry and in limbo.”
When will SNAP payments resume?
Around 42 million Americans benefit from SNAP, a nationwide scheme that’s worth an average of $187.20 per person per month, per statistics shared by the USDA, which runs the program.
However, after the recent government shutdown led to a lapse in funding for the federally-financed program, many beneficiaries were left waiting to receive their November money. Others were paid, but only partially.
But with the shutdown now over - a bill to reopen government was signed into law late on Wednesday - full SNAP payments are to resume across the U.S.
“Good news is on the way”
Speaking on CNN on Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said SNAP recipients can expect to have been paid by early next week.
“We immediately last night began moving out, making sure that the program continues unabated, starting once the government reopened,” Rollins said. “Hopefully by the end of this week most will receive it, at the very latest on Monday.
“But keep in mind, the SNAP program is funded by the federal government, but it is the 50 states and 50 different infrastructures that move that money out, which is what made it so complicated, the patchwork.
“It’s moving, it’s coming, and for those who really depend on it, good news is on the way.”
In its statement, the FRAC urged the USDA to work with states to “quickly deliver benefits and alleviate the harm”.
This shutdown showed how essential SNAP is for the 42 million people who rely on it to put food on the table. People cannot go without benefits, and states cannot carry the weight of higher costs and administrative burdens. https://t.co/sHidoXKGRz pic.twitter.com/SE71i4kXz6
— Food Research & Action Center (@fractweets) November 13, 2025
How the SNAP shutdown saga played out
There was no interruption to SNAP benefits during October, the first month of the U.S. federal government’s record-breaking, six-week shutdown. As November approached, however, the USDA warned of “insufficient funds” for this month’s payments.
After a Rhode Island federal judge issued a November 6 ruling ordering the government to continue funding SNAP benefits in their entirety, some states managed to make payments in full. However, the Supreme Court then issued a stay on this order on November 7, before extending this injunction on Tuesday.
In a statement on November 8, the USDA then capped states’ permitted distribution of SNAP benefits at 65% of recipients’ usual allotment.
Per an AP tally, around 30 states in the U.S. are understood to have issued only partial November benefits during the shutdown - or no benefits at all.
How the SNAP lapse affected people and businesses
In an info sheet on SNAP, the USDA says benefits paid out as part of the program “account for more than two-thirds of food spending among households with income below the poverty line”. Such households make up around three-quarters of all SNAP recipients, the USDA also says.
According to the latest figures published by the U.S. Census Bureau, 35.9 million Americans live below the poverty threshold.
What’s more, SNAP spending is an important source of business for smaller, local grocery stores. “Some stores in low-income neighborhoods have more than 50 percent SNAP sales,” Stephanie Johnson, the vice-president of the U.S.’s National Grocers Association, told a recent Q&A with the FRAC.
Speaking to MarketPlace, Johnson added that there are independent grocers whose “staffing and inventory are planned around SNAP benefits”.
In an interview with the New York Times on Monday, a grocer in Alabama offered a striking example of how a local store’s planning - and financial well-being - can be jeopardized by instability in the distribution of SNAP benefits.
“I’ve got a freezer full of turkeys,” Jimmy Wright, the owner of Wright’s Market in Opelika, a city of around 30,000 inhabitants, said. “We ordered inventory for holidays, all this stuff months ago. We’re on the hook for all of that.”
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