Jacob Fischler and Shauneen Miranda
Source New Mexico
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay about half of November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, though benefits could take months to flow to recipients, the department said Monday in a brief to a federal court in Rhode Island.
A four-page report from the USDA answered U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.’s order that President Donald Trump’s administration pay at least a portion of benefits to the 42 million people who receive assistance through the program by the end of Wednesday, despite the government shutdown.
The USDA action does not address what would happen if the shutdown stretches beyond November.
Leading Democrats in Congress blasted the administration’s decision to pay only part of the month’s benefits, saying Trump was willfully denying food assistance to needy Americans.
“Providing partial benefits is not enough, is not compliant with the law, and it’s particularly cruel of Trump with the Thanksgiving season around the corner,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
McConnell on Saturday laid out two options for the administration: Pay for partial benefits by the end of Wednesday through a contingency fund, which currently has about $4.65 billion available, or pay for a full month of benefits by tapping other reserve sources such as the child nutrition program by the end of Monday.
USDA opted to use the contingency fund, giving the department until the end of Wednesday to pay out benefits.
But a declaration from Patrick A. Penn, USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition and consumer services, said the administrative hurdles in calculating and delivering a half-month’s portion of benefits could take “anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”
The department was complying with McConnell’s order by starting the process of resuming payments Monday, according to the status report signed by U.S. Justice Department officials.
USDA “will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today by generating the table required for States to calculate the benefits available for each eligible household in that State,” they said. “USDA will therefore have made the necessary funds available and have authorized the States to begin disbursements once the table is issued.”
Delayed SNAP benefits in shutdown
McConnell’s order acknowledged that calculating reduced benefits would take the government some time, which he explained was why he gave USDA until Wednesday if the department chose that path.
But Penn said Monday that was not nearly enough time, in part due to some states’ outdated systems for processing benefits.
The federal government would provide states with updated tables for benefits at the partial funding level by Monday, he said. States will then need to send updated files to the vendors that process benefits and add them to beneficiaries’ debit-like EBT cards to be spent on groceries.
Monday marked the 34th day of the federal government shutdown, which began Oct. 1 when Congress failed to appropriate money for federal programs or pass a stopgap spending bill.
The U.S. Senate was expected to hold another procedural vote to move forward the House-passed GOP stopgap bill that would fund the government at fiscal 2025 levels until Nov. 21.
Democrats have voted against that measure in a bid to force negotiations on expiring tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
On Tuesday, the funding lapse will tie for the longest shutdown in history, which took place between 2018 and 2019.
Contingency fund dispute
Leading up to the end of October, the administration had warned it could not pay SNAP benefits for this month amid the shutdown, saying it was legally forbidden from using the contingency fund that was supposed to be for natural disasters and similar emergencies.
But two federal judges ruled Oct. 31 that the USDA not only could use the fund but was obligated to in order to keep SNAP benefits flowing.
Saturday marked the first lapse in benefit payments in the modern history of the program that dates to part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty agenda.
Lawmakers, advocates and SNAP experts said users of the program would see a delay in November benefits as the administration worked to restart it.
The administration’s insistence it could not use its contingency fund, originally appropriated by Congress at $6 billion, was a reversal from a Sept. 30 USDA plan on how to operate in a shutdown, which explicitly called for use of the fund to keep issuing benefits.
A month of SNAP benefits costs the federal government about $9 billion.
While USDA would not use the contingency fund to pay for regular benefits, it did spend about $750 million of the original $6 billion for other uses in October, according to a Monday declaration to the court by Penn.
The department spent about $450 million for state administrative expenses and $300 million for block grants to Puerto Rico and American Samoa, Penn wrote.
The department would again allocate $450 million for administrative expenses in November and $150 million for the block grants to territories, he added.
That left $4.65 billion available for November benefits, Penn wrote.
No use of child nutrition funds
Penn also explained USDA’s decision not to use a fund for a child nutrition program to cover shortfall for SNAP benefits.
The administration wanted to keep that fund fully stocked, he said.
“Child Nutrition Program funds are not a contingency fund for SNAP,” he said. “Using billions of dollars from Child Nutrition for SNAP would leave an unprecedented gap in Child Nutrition funding that Congress has never had to fill with annual appropriations, and USDA cannot predict what Congress will do under these circumstances.”
The child nutrition program funds school meals, summer meals for children and summer EBT benefits for low-income families with children. The school lunch program alone serves about 29 million children per day, Penn said.
