As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, mass layoffs, missed paychecks and halted infrastructure projects have done little to sway congressional Democrats into reopening the federal government.
But the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which they've long championed, is set to run out of funds in just over a week, a development which could change the shutdown's trajectory.
The program, which is administered by the Agriculture Department, helps feed more than 40 million people. Beginning Nov. 1, at least 25 states plan to cut off benefits for recipients, including California, where 4.5 million people rely on SNAP to put food on the table.
With the launch of open enrollment for Affordable Care Act insurance plans in most states also occurring Nov. 1, the looming food aid crisis has largely gone unnoticed by Democrats, who remain focused on the expiration of federal healthcare subsidies.
On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., indicated that the imminent SNAP deadline would not change his party's calculus.
"It should change Republicans' calculus, that they should sit down and negotiate — negotiate a way to address this crisis," he told Politico.
Asked if the issue was worth extending the shutdown beyond Nov. 1, given the risk of lapsing food aid, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., told the outlet, "Worth it to whom? To people who will lose their health care or to people who will lose their food?"
"We're people who want Americans to have health care and food," she added. "The Republicans, evidently, don't care whether they have either."
The Trump administration has shifted funds to pay active-duty troops, but there is no indication as of yet that it will redirect funds to patch the upcoming food aid gap.
The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides baby formula and other nutritional aid, also faces risk next month after the White House used some of President Donald Trump's tariff revenue to fund it through the end of October.
Trump administration officials and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill who spoke with Politico slammed Democrats for cavalierly risking hunger among millions of low-income Americans just before the holidays.
"The shutdown is Democrat performance art — the audience starves while the elitist critics applaud," one White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly said.
"What's it gonna take ... for the Democrats to say, 'Gee, huh, maybe — maybe people should be able to eat?'" Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked.
It isn't just Democrat-run states that will suffer when the SNAP funding runs out. Republican-led states are also at high risk, including large swaths of rural America that voted for Trump last November.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise's home state of Louisiana has one of the program's highest participation rates in the country, and Scalise said Wednesday that more than 800,000 state residents count on the program to feed their families.
Three people granted anonymity to speak freely told Politico that Democrats want the USDA to tap into a $5 billion SNAP contingency fund to offset the approximately $9 billion in funding needed to cover the program's November costs.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., is among the senators calling for the administration to fund SNAP in the same way that it funded WIC.
"I would argue that the same authorizations exist for [SNAP] as well," Luján told Politico.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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