The Trump administration says it will make partial benefit payments to food assistance recipients in November as the federal shutdown continues, though it was far from clear when those payments would begin reaching families.
Responding to a judge’s order in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on Monday, Nov. 3, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said it would make partial benefit payments rather than full ones and use a contingency fund in order to cover those payments.
But even as Michiganders began lining up at food pantries worried about how to feed themselves and their children and the state Legislature weighed shoring up benefits ahead of a federal suspension, the Trump administration warned that it could be days, weeks or longer before a rejiggered system of payment was put in place. Erin Stover, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said it was still waiting for additional information from the federal government on how the process would work, with benefit payments typically staggered over the course of a month.
The USDA had said on Oct. 24 it would suspend beginning in November all food assistance payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, through the states to some 42 million Americans − and 1.4 million Michiganders − because of the shutdown, which began as federal appropriations lapsed at midnight on Oct. 1.
But U.S. District Court Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island ruled on Friday, Oct. 31 that SNAP benefits, which had never been cut off in any previous government shutdown, are an entitlement under the law that must be paid. He − as did another federal judge in a case in Massachusetts brought by Michigan and other states − gave the USDA until Nov. 3 to decide if it would pay partial benefits for a time by using a contingency fund of some $5 billion or supplement that with other funds to pay full benefits.
In a response to McConnell, the USDA opted for partial benefits, saying that after other expenses were paid less than the $5 billion was available. “The above will leave a total of $4.65 billion in the contingency fund for November SNAP benefits that will all be obligated to cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” the response said.
Transferring funds from tariffs on imported goods as is allowed under the law to pay for SNAP, the USDA said, would rob other child nutrition programs, including school lunch and breakfast programs, of that funding during the shutdown. “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 response said.
The administration said it would also use the tariff funds to continue paying for benefits under another nutrition initiative for low-income families known as WIC, or the Women, Infants and Children program.
It was not immediately clear how long that funding for partial benefits would last.
And as it had argued in court, the Trump administration said it was also unclear just how quickly and efficiently the new partial benefit payments to states under SNAP could be rolled out, saying, “There are procedural difficulties that states will likely experience which would affect November SNAP benefits reaching households in a timely manner and in the correctly reduced amounts.”
“USDA is prepared to issue such notice and revised issuance tables to state agencies” immediately, the USDA said. “States will rely on the issuance tables to calculate the benefits due to each eligible household.”
But the agency warned that with massive technological differences between the states and the potential that benefit computation and maximum allotment amounts would have to be manually imputed into systems, there could be payment errors and “significant delays.”
“For at least some States,” the response said, “USDA’s understanding is that the system changes states must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”
The shutdown crossed the one-month mark on Saturday, Nov. 1, and appeared possible to break the 35-day record for the longest ever later in the week. Republicans in the majority in the U.S. House and Senate have insisted on a short-term resolution to fund the government absent any kind of policy change or major spending alteration. But Democrats − a handful of whose votes are needed to cross a 60-vote threshold in the Senate to pass the resolution − have refused, saying they first want negotiation on controlling skyrocketing premium increases for health care policies under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, after Dec. 31.
As the shutdown has continued, however, more pressure is being brought on lawmakers from both parties. The threat to food assistance added significantly to that pressure but is far from the only factor. Huge numbers of federal employees, including military personnel, law enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol officials, air-traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents are working without pay and staffing issues have already slowed air travel in some cases.
This story will be updated.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on X @tsspangler.
