President Donald Trump’s administration agreed Monday to provide partial payments for a critical food assistance program after two judges ruled on Friday to keep nutrition aid funded.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which costs roughly $9.2 billion to run a month, ran dry on Nov. 1 due to the now-34-day government shutdown — leaving nearly 42 million Americans without the program’s food assistance. The federal judges ruled the program must be funded by a contingency fund containing about $5 billion, according to the Associated Press, but it remains unclear how much money beneficiaries could receive, nor how quickly they would gain access to the smaller amount of benefits.
The two U.S. District Judges — both appointed by former President Barack Obama — gave the White House until Monday of this week to relay updates on their decision to fund the nutrition program, according to the AP.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins on Friday highlighted the contingency fund’s inability to cover SNAP, not just because of its lack of funds, but because it is only possible to use the fund if the underlying funds are flowing.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson argued it is illegal to use the contingency fund in the case of a shutdown during a Monday press conference, claiming the fund is instead designed for emergencies, such as hurricanes, in which people need extra assistance.
“If you have an unexpected natural occurrence, like a hurricane or something, and SNAP benefits are flowing, but you have a subset of the population that needs additional benefits, then the contingency fund would go,” Johnson said. “The contingency fund could not be used legally if the underlying fund was suspended, and that’s what happened in the CR. The Democrats voted to stop SNAP payments.”
The average SNAP benefit is about $190 per person.
As the vast majority of the Senate Democratic Caucus continues to block a GOP-backed bipartisan measure to reopen the government, lawmakers aiming to alleviate the shutdown’s consequences on SNAP are likely to see more roadblocks.
“It’s not as easy as hitting go, send on a computer. You got to go through and reallocate partial payments to the 42 million recipients of the program. That puts a huge burden on states and on feds to try to figure that out in short order,” Johnson also said on Monday. “If you notice, the president is not appealing the decision, he wants it to be done, but he doesn’t see the mechanism to do it.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Monday the quickest way to end all the shutdown’s impacts, including the lapsed SNAP benefits, is to reopen the government immediately and allow all funds to flow.
“Things like SNAP should not be in disarray if the Democrats just open the government,” Scalise said. “[Reopening the government] could clear up all the confusion about the SNAP program, paying our troops, paying our TSA agents, all of our other federal workers and at least free that up. If [Democrats] passed that bill today, all the uncertainty that federal employees are having, SNAP recipients, WIC recipients are having, would be removed immediately.”
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