Food fight on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON—Volunteers and church employees at Reformation Church Food Pantry worry that, come Saturday, there will be a lot more people coming to them looking for food. And that’s not a position that their system is designed to be in, explained Julie Miller, director of facilities and operations at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C., which runs the food pantry.

“Food pantries are not supposed to be the main source of food for people. They are supposed to provide help in gaps of life,” Miller said. “It should not be the responsibility of people, whether they have jobs or not, to be food pantry hopping … to find the narrow, two-hour windows of time where pantries are open or can provide a hot meal.”

Miller said the food pantry has already seen an increase in the number of people coming for food assistance during the government shutdown, which has now lasted nearly a month. While Reformation Church Food Pantry doesn’t rely on the government for assistance, other pantries do receive food shipments from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But because of the shutdown, the USDA recently said it no longer had the funds to keep up its food assistance programs—specifically, its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, commonly referred to as food stamps.

“Bottom line, the well has run dry,” the agency said in an unsigned statement on its website, blaming Senate Democrats for repeatedly voting not to fund the government. The USDA added that, as of Nov. 1, it wouldn’t be able to provide any more assistance to the roughly 42 million people who rely on SNAP benefits for groceries.

As food pantries like the one at Lutheran Church of the Reformation face the prospect of more people coming to them for food, and families face the possibility of losing access to affordable groceries, senators on Capitol Hill remain divided about how to help. Meanwhile, state governments, concerned about their own ability to make up the funding difference, are taking the Trump administration to court to try to force it to fund the program.

SNAP provides financial assistance to low-income families so that they can afford nutritious foods, according to the USDA’s website. The program provides eligible households with an electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card that functions like a debit card and that the government deposits money into each month.

Recipients can use the financial assistance to buy fruit, vegetables, meat, snack foods, and nonalcoholic beverages. The program does not cover purchases of alcoholic beverages, nicotine or tobacco products, or products containing marijuana-affiliated ingredients. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed earlier this year, enacted more stringent work requirements and took steps to ensure that illegal immigrants could not receive benefits through the program.

Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation to keep SNAP funded amid the ongoing government shutdown. The bill would give the USDA the funds it needs to keep SNAP benefits flowing uninterrupted, Hawley’s office explained in a statement. In Hawley’s home state of Missouri, roughly 650,000 people rely on the program to put food on the table.

From the other side of the aisle, Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has voiced his support for Hawley’s bill. “The point [of the shutdown] is to protect healthcare for people who have it,” he told WORLD. “It’s not to take food from people who need it. So that’s why I’m co-sponsoring.”

When asked whether he thought the bill might prolong the shutdown by removing an incentive for Democrats to work with Republicans to fund the government, Welch answered: “I’m really concerned about people not getting fed.”

Meanwhile, Democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate have argued that the USDA already has the funds available to continue providing SNAP benefits throughout the shutdown. In dual letters to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Democrats from both chambers argued that the USDA has contingency funds set aside that it can use to fund the SNAP in the event of a government shutdown. In their letter, House Democrats pointed out that the USDA has a shutdown plan, saying the agency can—and will—use its contingency funds to keep SNAP benefits flowing during a shutdown.

That shutdown plan has been deleted from USDA’s website. But an Internet Archive copy of the plan shows that the agency did say it could fund the program in the event of a shutdown.

In a recent memo obtained by Axios, the USDA said it would be illegal to use the contingency funds to keep SNAP running during a government shutdown. The agency argues the contingency funds were meant to assist families in the event of a natural disaster, not a government shutdown. Rollins has insisted that SNAP is out of funding and that Senate Democrats are responsible.

But Democrats argue that it’s Republicans who are responsible. “I think that Republicans should be negotiating with us about reopening the government so that millions of Americans aren’t hungrier, less healthy, and poorer,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told WORLD. “President [Donald] Trump ran on reducing people’s costs and making America healthy again. His decisions so far as an administration have gone in the wrong direction on both. Cutting off SNAP, should that happen, is just another step in demonstrating widespread lack of concern about the health and well-being of millions of Americans.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., proposed his own bill—backed by all the Senate’s Democrats and two independents—that would force USDA to fund SNAP. The bill would require the agency to do so with the billions of dollars in funds Democrats insist the agency already has on hand, according to a statement from Luján’s office. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans will not support the Democrats’ proposal.

“This bill is a cynical attempt to provide political cover for Democrats to allow them to carry on their government shutdown even longer,” Thune said during a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. “And we’re not going to let them pick winners and losers. It’s time to fund everybody.”

Republicans say Democrats have previously blocked efforts at SNAP funding. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla, said he would support Hawley’s bill to fund SNAP during the shutdown.

“I’ve also supported the [agricultural] appropriations bill that we tried to go to conference on last week, because that would have fully funded SNAP already. And so that would completely take that off the table,” Lankford explained. “My Democratic colleagues blocked that.”

Outside the halls of Congress, 25 states or governors and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, saying that it’s illegally holding back the contingency funds that could be used to fund SNAP. If the USDA doesn’t approve allocating that money toward funding the program, the states say they would have to feed roughly 25 million people spread out across their communities with state funding. The USDA has not given any indication the states would be reimbursed for those expenditures.

The lawsuit claims the USDA has used its contingency funds to keep money flowing to its Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. That program provides food assistance to women who are pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding, or individuals with young children. If the USDA withholds contingency funds from SNAP, it will force Americans to go without food—and that could cause severe harm to communities and individuals, the lawsuit argues.

Nonprofits and ministries like Reformation Church Food Pantry also point out that a SNAP funding shortfall will increase the burden on them.

“When we are not receiving the nutrients that we need … that affects everything from the way that children are able to learn, from the way that folks are able to perform their jobs well, from the ways that we are able to just function in a society,” said Julie Miller. “When people go hungry, their brains are in survival mode, which means that they cannot make choices that they would be able to make if their bodies were fully functioning.”