{"id":14753,"date":"2025-10-23T09:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/food-aid-cliff-bears-down-on-democrats-as-shutdown-nears-1-month-mark\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T09:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:02:08","slug":"food-aid-cliff-bears-down-on-democrats-as-shutdown-nears-1-month-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/food-aid-cliff-bears-down-on-democrats-as-shutdown-nears-1-month-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"Food-aid cliff bears down on Democrats as shutdown nears 1-month mark"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Missed paychecks, canceled infrastructure projects and mass firings haven\u2019t yet convinced congressional Democrats to change their government shutdown stance. But they are now facing down another pressure point threatening a program they\u2019ve long championed benefiting millions of Americans.<\/p>\n

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps feed more than 40 million people, will start to run out of funds Nov. 1, President Donald Trump\u2019s USDA is warning<\/a>. At least 25 states plan to cut off benefits<\/a> starting on that date \u2014 including California, the overwhelmingly Democratic state with 4.5 million SNAP recipients.<\/p>\n

The food-aid cliff has largely flown under the radar as Democrats focus on another Nov. 1 development: the launch of open enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance plans in most states. They believe massive premium hikes prompted by the expiration of key federal subsidies will compel Republicans to relent and negotiate an extension at that time.<\/p>\n

So far, despite the possible food assistance fallout in just over a week, top Democrats are pushing ahead and refusing to shore up the votes to reopen the government.<\/p>\n

Asked Tuesday if the cliff would change his party\u2019s calculus, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> said it would not: \u201cIt should change Republicans\u2019 calculus, that they should sit down and negotiate \u2014 negotiate a way to address this crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Elizabeth Warren<\/a> (D-Mass.), asked if it was worth pushing the shutdown beyond Nov. 1 given the risk of food aid lapsing, replied, \u201cWorth it to whom? To people who will lose their health care or to people who will lose their food?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re people who want Americans to have health care and food,\u201d she added. \u201cThe Republicans, evidently, don’t care whether they have either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump and members of his administration have acted selectively to ease shutdown impacts on agencies and programs they perceive as benefiting their political allies \u2014 shifting funds to pay active duty troops, for instance, while letting civilian workers go unpaid.<\/p>\n

That approach appears to be playing out at USDA, where there is no firm indication the Trump administration will act to patch the impending SNAP lapse. A separate initiative delivering baby formula and other nutrition aid under the Women, Infants and Children program is also at risk next month after the White House moved to use some tariff revenue as a backfill early in the shutdown.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the administration is planning to partially reopen key farm loans and shuttered local USDA offices beginning Thursday \u2014 addressing a key GOP shutdown pain point that Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> and other farm state Republican lawmakers have pressed the White House<\/a> on since the shutdown started four weeks ago.<\/p>\n

For now, Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers are eager to blame Democrats for risking hunger among millions of low-income Americans right before the holiday season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe shutdown is Democrat performance art \u2014 the audience starves while the elitist critics applaud,\u201d said one White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n

Sen. Josh Hawley<\/a> (R-Mo.) added, \u201cWhat’s it gonna take \u2026 for the Democrats to say, \u2018Gee, huh, maybe \u2014 maybe people should be able to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just blue states like California and New York that will suffer. Red states are also at high risk, as well as large pockets of rural America that voted for Trump. For instance, Louisiana \u2014 home to Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a> and Majority Leader Steve Scalise<\/a> \u2014 has one of the highest SNAP participation rates in the country, and Scalise noted Wednesday more than 800,000 Louisianans rely on the program.<\/p>\n

White House officials are keenly aware of the consequences for their own voters, even as they continue to needle Democrats on the topic. Several Republican governors have already reached out to the administration to understand what the consequences will be.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has options, which officials are weighing, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the private deliberations: Democrats want USDA to deploy a SNAP contingency fund that currently holds about $5 billion to offset the roughly $9 billion in funding needed to cover costs for November. Sen. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n<\/a>, a New Mexico Democrat, is among senators also pushing the administration to use tariff revenue as they\u2019ve done with WIC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would argue that the same authorizations exist for [SNAP] as well,\u201d Luj\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n

But some Trump officials say finding a SNAP patch won\u2019t be so simple. Tapping the contingency fund wouldn\u2019t leave money for other emergencies that are known to pop up with the program, and if the full $9 billion can\u2019t be covered, it could take weeks to mete out a smaller percentage of money to each state\u2019s program \u2014 meaning families would miss their Nov. 1 food benefits anyway. Meanwhile, the legality of using tariff revenue for SNAP is unclear and would also pull money from child nutrition programs \u2014 which the Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to replenish.<\/p>\n

Republicans privately believe the food aid cliff could motivate some more moderate Democratic senators to relent and vote for a GOP-led stopgap bill that would reopen the government. With five additional votes needed to pass that measure, they are eyeing Sens. Jeanne Shaheen<\/a> and Maggie Hassan<\/a> of New Hampshire, Kristen Gillibrand<\/a> of New York and Gary Peters<\/a> of Michigan, among others.<\/p>\n

Peters, who is retiring, said in an interview he has \u201ca lot of concerns\u201d about the possible loss of food aid but that it was up to Republicans to come to the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just so curious that Republicans are not willing to come together on health care \u2014 when the ACA tax credits go away, it hits primarily Republican congressional districts and Republican states,\u201d Peters said. \u201cSo Republicans don’t care about their own people.\u201d<\/p>\n

That rhetoric was echoed by a host of Democrats this week, including California Sen. Alex Padilla<\/a>, who said \u201cthe best way to address that is for Republicans to come to the table, work with Democrats to reopen the government and address the spike in health care costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others are frustrated that Republicans appear to be using food aid as leverage after moving to cut more than $200 billion in spending from the SNAP program as part of their sweeping domestic policy bill passed this summer along party lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re the ones that made the cuts to SNAP to begin with, and they should be funding SNAP,\u201d said Sen. Amy Klobuchar<\/a> of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee. \u201cSo it’s very rich if they’re saying they’re going to cut SNAP when they made all the cuts to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rep. Henry Cuellar<\/a> (D-Texas) estimated 361,000 people in his district \u2014 nearly half his constituency \u2014 could be affected by the SNAP cliff. But he also noted the high number of families who relied on ACA health insurance subsidies and said he did not see a reason for Democrats to relent right now \u2014 pointing to some perceived cracks on the GOP side, such as Thune\u2019s offer to Senate Democrats of a vote to extend the Obamacare tax credits.<\/p>\n

Asked how many days Democrats could hold out, Cuellar referenced the record-long shutdown during Trump\u2019s first term. \u201dLast time,\u201d he said, \u201cwe did 35.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missed paychecks, canceled infrastructure projects and mass firings haven\u2019t yet convinced congressional Democrats to change their government shutdown stance. But they are now facing down another pressure point threatening a program they\u2019ve long championed benefiting millions of Americans. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps feed more than 40 million people, will start to run […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}