More than 40 million Americans are days away from losing their monthly food benefits as a result of the government shutdown — and the solution from many Republicans and Democrats is for the other side to cave.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has already said that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will not be available in November, despite a SNAP contingency fund containing about $5 billion of the roughly $9 billion needed for food benefits next month. Republicans seem intent on putting Democrats to a choice: reopen the government and potentially accept Obamacare premiums spiking, or let people go hungry.
For Democrats like Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., the answer is an easy one: support the Republican continuing resolution.
Fetterman noted that he would like to extend the Obamacare tax credits to make health insurance more affordable, as Democrats are demanding in exchange for their support of the GOP funding bill. But Fetterman said he strongly disagrees with using a shutdown to extract those concessions, particularly when one of the potential outcomes is “hungry people.”
“That is the Democrats’ Sophie’s choice,” said Fetterman, who has voted with Republicans throughout the shutdown in support of the GOP’s funding bill.
Other lawmakers don’t seem to be budging, arguing that the prospect of hungry Americans should only motivate the other party to move off its shutdown position.
“If the Democrats don’t sign onto this C.R.,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said of the GOP continuing resolution, “then we have a lot of things that are going to run out of money, and SNAP is gonna be one of them.”
When MSNBC asked Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., what she suggested families who rely on food benefits do come November, she had a simple answer. “Call your Democrat senator and tell them to open back up the government,” Britt said.
And facing the prospect of depleted food benefits, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked Politico what it was going to take “for the Democrats to say, ‘Gee, huh, maybe — maybe people should be able to eat?’”
Hawley has offered a temporary solution to the food aid cliff, introducing a bill to reinstate SNAP benefits. “Our kids deserve to eat,” Hawley said in a statement.
But the looming problem isn’t doing much to change the shutdown calculus, even for Democrats, though many Democratic lawmakers are looking for alternative solutions to the SNAP funding shortage.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal told MSNBC he is hoping his home state, Connecticut, will “fill in the gaps” for his constituents. “We’re very firm, explicit, clear, that we are going to insist on extending the health care tax credit and working at the same time for the SNAP benefits,” Blumenthal said.
Similarly, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., told MSNBC that in the coming weeks and months, state funding “is being redirected to try to fill in the gaps here.”
But Padilla also admitted that “there is no substitute for the federal government doing its job,” and that “the best way” to address the food aid cliff was for “Republicans to come to the table, work with Democrats to reopen the government and address the spike in health care costs.”
Still, even if some states pick up the slack on food benefits during the shutdown, it’s clear some families could face unexpected challenges come November, and Democrats also aren’t budging from their long-held position that the easiest solution to the shutdown is for Republicans to just give in and extend Obamacare subsidies.
When Politico asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., if it was worth pushing the shutdown beyond Nov. 1 given the coming food crisis, Warren reportedly shot back: “Worth it to whom? To people who will lose their health care or to people who will lose their food?”
“We’re people who want Americans to have health care and food,” Warren said. “The Republicans, evidently, don’t care whether they have either.”
Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated by the shutdown and the GOP’s stance, which is that Republicans won’t negotiate on expiring Obamacare subsidies until Democrats vote to reopen the government.
When asked if Republicans were putting Democrats in a position of choosing between health care and food aid, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told MSNBC he was “sick and tired of talking about ways to manage the shutdown when Republicans are refusing to even negotiate.”
We’re talking about families that do not have food for their children. We’ve always seen families where parents went without meals to make sure that their kids had meals, but now they’re not even having meals for their kids.”
Deb Haynes, executive director of Food for Others
Blumenthal also suggested his Republican colleagues are “hurting their own constituents by refusing, utterly and totally refusing, even to come to the table and talk about how we solve this problem.”
Asked whether the expiring SNAP benefits changed her calculus on the shutdown, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., told MSNBC that the potential cut to SNAP “further highlights the immoral stance that this administration is taking.”
“It also highlights that this has been their plan all along,” Alsobrooks said of Republicans.
She repeatedly emphasized the effect of letting Obamacare subsidies expire and again suggested she wouldn’t change her position on the shutdown over depleting SNAP funds.
But while each side waits for the other to give in, food banks and families are already feeling the pain — anticipating a growing strain on their pantries as the shutdown continues.
Deb Haynes, executive director of Food for Others in Fairfax, Va., told MSNBC that between the government shutdown, cuts at the Agriculture Department and tariffs raising grocery costs, her food bank hasn’t struggled this much since April 2020. “There are layers upon layers of stressors in the emergency food network right now,” Haynes said.
“We’re talking about families that do not have food for their children. We’ve always seen families where parents went without meals to make sure that their kids had meals, but now they’re not even having meals for their kids,” she said.
Aliymah Lyon, a SNAP recipient in Virginia, uses the benefits to help provide for her 11-year-old son. She said she’s already thinking about how to ration food. “My mom has always taught us how to survive with smaller food, canned goods and all that,” Lyon said. “So yeah, rice, beans and everything you have to use in order to survive.”
But for those who depend on these resources, there’s a growing sense of frustration with lawmakers.
“I really think it’s a shame what they’re doing on Capitol Hill, you know, because you’re playing with people’s lives,” Alonzo Lockridge, who receives SNAP benefits, said. “Help us. We need you guys.”
When asked if Republicans were putting Democrats in a position of choosing between health care and food aid, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told MSNBC he was “sick and tired of talking about ways to manage the shutdown when Republicans are refusing to even negotiate.”
Peggy Helman is a desk associate at MS NOW.
Arielle Hixson is an Emmy-nominated reporter for MS NOW.