“SNAP recipients shouldn’t go with out meals. Folks must be getting paid on this nation. And we’ve tried to try this 13 instances! You voted no 13 instances! This isn’t a political recreation. These are actual folks’s lives that we’re speaking about!”
That was Senate Majority Chief John Thune ranting on the Senate flooring this week, attempting guilty Democrats for the cutoff of Supplemental Dietary Help Program (SNAP) advantages on Saturday.
Look, it’s honest to tag Democrats for being the instigators of the federal government shutdown, however not for President Donald Trump’s selections that maximize the shutdown’s ache and damage individuals who don’t must be damage.
Earlier than the shutdown started nearly a month in the past, the Division of Agriculture, led by Secretary Brooke Rollins, made clear that the supply of SNAP, nonetheless typically referred to by its former moniker, Meals Stamps, needn’t be impacted. The 55-page USDA “Lapse of Funding Plan” contains the next part:
Supplemental Vitamin Help Program (SNAP): OMB’s Basic Counsel supplied a letter to USDA on Could 23, 2025, stating that there’s a bona fide have to obligate advantages for October –…thereby guaranteeing that profit funds can be found for program operations even within the occasion of a authorities shutdown in the beginning of a fiscal yr. As well as, Congressional intent is obvious that SNAP’s operations ought to proceed because the program has been supplied with multi-year contingency funds that can be utilized for State Administrative Bills to make sure that the State also can proceed operations throughout a Federal Authorities shutdown…
That plan was accessible right here at this URL till at the very least October 10, in response to the Web Archive Wayback Machine. However Trump’s USDA has memory-holed it. While you go to that URL now, you get an assault on Democrats that just about absolutely violates the Hatch Act: “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 instances to not fund the meals stamp program, often known as the Supplemental Vitamin Help Program (SNAP). Backside line, the nicely has run dry. Presently, there will likely be no advantages issued November 01. We’re approaching an inflection level for Senate Democrats. They will proceed to carry out for healthcare for unlawful aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the federal government so moms, infants, and probably the most susceptible amongst us can obtain essential diet help.”
The web site change tracked a USDA memo issued final week claiming “contingency funds will not be legally accessible to cowl common advantages … As a substitute, the contingency fund is a supply of funds for contingencies, such because the Catastrophe SNAP program,” an assertion that contradicts the sooner USDA plan, and plenty of authorized specialists reject. The New York Occasions reported:
David A. Tremendous, a legislation professor at Georgetown College and a federal funds professional, referred to as the memo’s rationale “absurd,” and stated “nothing within the legislation imposes that restrict” of utilizing contingency funding just for pure disasters. “Each the primary Trump administration and this administration, as just lately as the tip of September, stated these funds had been accessible within the case of lapses in appropriations,” he stated. “That is blatantly lawless.”
The Middle for Price range and Coverage Priorities notes that SNAP has by no means been disrupted throughout previous shutdowns. “Throughout each Republican and Democratic administrations, SNAP advantages have all the time been supplied utilizing accessible funding sources to forestall a break in advantages.”
Republicans can pretty blame Democrats for different shutdown-related disruptions, equivalent to the dearth of routine meals inspections, unstaffed nationwide parks, and cessation of paychecks for many federal employees. (Democrats can retort by noting Republicans can reopen the federal government on their very own by suspending the filibuster.)
However Democrats shoulder no accountability for Trump and Rollins chopping off SNAP advantages from those that want them to outlive. You may’t even argue Democrats ought to have anticipated SNAP to be affected as a result of USDA declared forward of the shutdown that it wouldn’t. The variety of recipients tops 40 million, greater than a tenth of the U.S. inhabitants. Other than the human struggling, the financial blow to grocers, distributors, and farmers will likely be sizeable, too. For this reason these packages, at the very least till just lately, loved bipartisan help.
Thune can save his performative rage for the folks taking part in political video games with folks’s lives: Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Rollins.
