SNAP Funding Expiration to Hit 40M Americans

More than 40 million low-income food stamp beneficiaries are expected to receive less help with grocery bills — or no help at all — in the coming days.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is threatening to withhold billions of dollars in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) contingency funding, which Congress has already allocated for emergency scenarios, if the government shutdown stretches into November.

There is between $5 billion and $6 billion currently in that fund, experts say. That’s not enough to cover the estimated $8 billion in SNAP benefits due out next month, but it would allow for partial payments to help low-income Americans defray food costs.

On Friday, however, USDA released guidance saying it won’t use those funds to cover SNAP benefits if the government shutdown extends beyond Oct. 31 — a move that appears designed to maximize the pressure on Senate Democrats to support a GOP spending bill to reopen the government.

In a memo, first reported by Axios, the USDA said the reason is simple: The contingency fund was designed to respond to unforeseen events, like natural disasters, and the current shutdown doesn’t qualify because it was manufactured by Democrats. To spend the money on SNAP benefits during such an event, the USDA argues, would be illegal.

“[T]he contingency fund is a source of funds for contingencies, such as the Disaster SNAP program, which provides food purchasing benefits for individuals in disaster areas, including natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, that can come on quickly and without notice,” the memo reads.

The memo contradicts the shutdown plan prepared by USDA earlier in the year, which said the department is legally obligated to pay SNAP benefits in the event of a shutdown.

“Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operation should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds that can be used for State Administrative Expenses to ensure that the State can also continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown,” that policy read.

The plan has since been deleted. And Brooke Rollins, the secretary of the USDA, had forecast the new policy in recent days, saying the burden is on Senate Democrats to liberate those funds by voting to end the shutdown.

“You’re talking about millions and millions of vulnerable families, of hungry families, that are not going to have access to these programs because of this shutdown,” Rollins told reporters recently.

Democrats and other SNAP supporters have denounced the shift, saying the law is clear: USDA must release the contingency funds. And they’re hammering the administration for not acting sooner to ensure that benefits don’t run out.

“It could have, and should have, taken steps weeks ago to be ready to use these funds,” Sharon Parrott, the head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in a statement. “Instead, it may choose not to use them in an effort to gain political advantage.”

While SNAP’s administrative costs are split between the states and the federal government, Washington covers the full cost of the benefits themselves. And states, which operate the program, have been bracing for the worst. Some are warning that no SNAP benefits will be distributed after Oct. 31, while others say the cuts might happen even sooner.

The funding shortfall is affecting red and blue states across the country — including Texas, Oklahoma, California and New York, where officials had posted warnings that SNAP benefits would be paused in November even before the USDA memo became public.

Some states, like Virginia, have announced that they will tap state funds to cover the shortfall, at least temporarily. But USDA has stipulated that it won’t reimburse those costs, and many states simply lack the funds to make that investment on their own.

The threat to suspend food aid has been denounced by Democrats on Capitol Hill, who are accusing the administration of purposefully exacerbating the harmful fallout of the shutdown, even in cases when they have the power to soften the impact.

“This is perhaps the most cruel and unlawful offense the Trump administration has perpetrated yet — freezing funding already enacted into law to feed hungry Americans while he shovels tens of billions of dollars out the door to Argentina and into his ballroom,” Reps. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, and Angie Craig (D-Minn.), the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, said Friday in a statement responding to the USDA memo.

Trump officials have located stopgap funding to fill other shortfalls amid the budget impasse — including money to prop up another nutrition program benefiting women and children, known as WIC. But they’ve declined to do the same with SNAP.

The contingency fund is another backstop. That fund is rolled over in three-year increments, and heading into November, it contains about $6 billion, from appropriations provided in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, but lacks the $3 billion from fiscal 2026 because Congress is at odds over that funding bill — the impasse that’s created the shutdown.

Before USDA released its guidance on Friday night, The Hill posed a series of questions to the USDA, including why the department won’t tap the SNAP contingency fund after Nov. 1. The anonymous response did not address any of those inquiries, instead amplifying Rollins’s previous statements that the fate of the food subsidies is in the hands of Democrats in Congress.

“We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. Continue to hold out for the Far-Left wing of the party or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive timely WIC and SNAP allotments,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email.

Democrats previously had requested a briefing on how the shutdown would affect SNAP, but were denied. When Democrats asked the reason why, USDA officials said it was because their party is to blame for the shutdown, according to a source familiar with that exchange.

The fight over SNAP arrives as Trump and his budget director, Russell Vought, are leaning on the shutdown to accelerate their ongoing efforts to shrink the federal government, including the mass firing of federal workers. Trump has said the impasse provides him an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash programs, and he’s made clear that he’s targeting those initiatives favored by Democrats.

“We’re only cutting Democrat programs, I hate to tell you,” Trump said earlier in the month.

Even so, the administration has shuffled funding around to prop up some programs championed by his political rivals.

At the start of the shutdown, for instance, the administration had stepped in to prevent a shortfall facing the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), another USDA initiative that provides food aid to a smaller subset of low-income people (roughly 6 million), including pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and children under the age of five.

To keep WIC benefits whole through October, Trump’s budget team had tapped $300 million from the president’s tariff revenues. But that money, too, is soon to expire, according to advocates, and there’s no indication the administration is preparing a similar transfer for November.

The question of how the shutdown will impact federal food aid has been complicated by the changes to SNAP — including new work requirements and other eligibility limits — that Trump and Republicans adopted in their “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the package of tax cuts and GOP policy priorities enacted over the summer.

Republicans have touted that law as a necessary step toward rooting out waste, fraud and abuse across major federal programs, including Medicaid and SNAP. And GOP leaders in recent days have argued the importance of reopening the government to ensure those food benefits flow to those in need. Only Democrats, they say, are standing in the way.

“We have lots of SNAP recipients in our state, as we do in many others,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Thursday. “You’re talking about — I think it’s 42 or 43 million Americans rely upon that vital service — and it’s unconscionable that they would be held at bay and held as leverage on this.”

Democrats say Republicans ceded the moral authority over the issue when they cut SNAP by an estimated $186 billion in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

“That’s the largest SNAP cut in American history. And people are to believe right now that Republicans actually care about hunger when they rip food away from the mouths of hungry children, seniors, families, women and veterans to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Friday in the Capitol.

“Get lost with that,” he added. “The American people are not buying it.”