Over the summer, I wrote about cuts to food stamps, formally known as SNAP, in the Republicans’ reconciliation bill. At the time, experts estimated that the bill would force at least 2 million of SNAP’s roughly 42 million recipients to lose their benefits. Unfortunately, it appears that the Trump administration isn’t content to simply take SNAP away from some people in the future; instead, they are using the government shutdown as an excuse to take SNAP away from as many people as possible in just a few days.
With the government shutdown continuing due to Republican insistence on not extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, SNAP money has not been appropriated for the fiscal year. However, the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, has an emergency fund that it could tap into the cover a portion of November’s SNAP benefits. Unfortunately, and with little explanation, the Department has said that it will not use the SNAP emergency fund to provide benefits for November.
Let’s just be clear about what’s happening: the administration and its allies in Congress are so intent on making sure people’s healthcare prices increase that they are also allowing tens of millions of people to go hungry.
States are scrambling to set up their own stopgap measures, but it’s unlikely that these efforts will be enough to provide all recipients the full amount of benefits they are entitled to. Additionally, states led by Democrats have sued the administration to force it to use the contingency funds.
I want to talk about everyone’s favorite pretend populist, Josh Hawley. After voting to cut SNAP over the summer, the senator from my home state of Missouri is now waxing emotional in the New York Times about the poor families who will go hungry without SNAP. He even quotes a sad child asking their grandma about how they will afford food. Where was Hawley’s concern for starving kids and helpless grandmas when he voted to increase the age threshold for stricter SNAP work requirements from 54 to 64?
Hawley has sponsored a bill to fund SNAP during the shutdown, but he no doubt knows this bill will never become law, not least because Speaker Mike Johnson is apparently keeping the House out of session indefinitely to prevent the release of the Epstein files. Hawley pulled a similar stunt earlier this year, proposing a bill to protect Medicaid after supporting the reconciliation bill and its huge cuts to Medicaid. Hawley’s opportunism is so transparent that it’s almost comical. It makes me think of a line from Andor: “They don’t even bother to lie badly anymore. I suppose that’s the final humiliation.”
Anyway, support your local food bank if you can. Your neighbors will thank you.
0 Comments