Food Banks Usually Replenish Their Resources in January. This Year, They Got the Shutdown Instead.

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/01/shutdown-central-texas-food-bank-food-stamps-furloughed-federal-workers-relief-hunger/


Food Banks Usually Replenish Their Resources in January. This Year, They Got the Shutdown Instead.
“If this goes into March, it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult.”
Tom Philpott
January 24, 2019 6:00 AM

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Chubbs and his team are also bracing for another shutdown-related shock to the system: disruptions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called food stamps. SNAP serves 39 million people nationwide, nearly two-thirds of whom are children, elderly, or have disabilities. In Travis County alone—which encompasses Austin—more than 100,000 people rely on SNAP benefits. While the shutdown and the lack of a spending bill technically zero out SNAP’s budget, the Trump administration tapped an obscure provision in the previous spending bill to fund the program through February. To make it work, though, the administration released February funds to most SNAP recipients on January 20, more than a week earlier than the usual end-of-the-month time frame.

The stopgap measure was crucial to maintaining February SNAP benefits, but it raised two problems. For one, it does nothing to ensure funding for the program in March, which will have no budget if the shutdown lasts that long. So far, the administration has revealed no contingency plan to fund SNAP after February.
“The much longer than usual gap…will cause some households whose budgets already are extremely tight to face heightened difficulties affording food.”

And even if the shutdown ends or more funding to continue the program emerges, the early disbursement on January 20 means most recipients will have to wait an unusually long time—about 5 weeks—before their next payment at the end of February. Nationwide, “about 15 million households, which include about 30 million people, could experience a gap between monthly SNAP payments of more than 40 days,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found in a new report. “Even if the shutdown is resolved in time for the government to provide full March SNAP benefits on time, the much longer than usual gap between benefit receipt for February and March will cause some households whose budgets already are extremely tight to face heightened difficulties affording food, as they await their March benefits.”

That makes Chubbs nervous. “When we have conversations with our clients who are participating in SNAP, one of the things they tell us is that the benefits are only enough to last for about three weeks,” Chubbs says. Usually the food bank tries to “bridge the gap during that fourth week, until the next time they’re able to get their benefits.” Now, many recipients are facing an extra week without another infusion of SNAP funds, putting yet more pressure on the Central Texas Food Bank’s resources.

These twin burdens—uncertainties around SNAP and the emergence of hundreds of thousands of federal workers living without pay—will inevitably result in a squeeze on food-aid resources and a jump in people going hungry. “If this goes into March, it’s going to be extraordinarily difficult,” Chubbs says. “I’ll tell you right now, we can’t meet that demand.”