Search Articles
WASHINGTON (CN) — Democrats on Wednesday ratcheted up pressure on President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to save millions of Americans’ access to federal food aid before the program runs out of funding this week.
Top Democratic lawmakers slammed their Republican colleagues for blocking a bill that would ensure the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program remains online past Nov. 1 — and accused the Trump administration of deliberately refusing to access emergency funds for food aid.
“Donald Trump is a vindictive politician and a heartless man,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “Let’s be clear: This does not need to happen.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that funding for SNAP benefits, which include food stamps, is set to run dry this weekend as the government lurches toward one month of shutdown. In a notice on its website, the agency blames Senate Democrats for the budget lapse and claims “the well has run dry” for food aid.
But Schumer and other congressional Democrats pointed to reports that the USDA and the White House have refused to access roughly $6 billion in emergency funding that could keep SNAP benefits available for a short period. The agency and Republicans have said the backup fund can only be used for true emergencies such as natural disasters.
Colorado Representative Joe Neguse, assistant House Democratic leader, said in a separate news conference Wednesday that his GOP colleagues had provided “all sorts of fanciful narratives” explaining why the government can’t access the USDA’s emergency fund for SNAP aid. “[T]he Trump administration has made a conscious and deliberate choice to suspend SNAP benefits,” he argued.
If SNAP is allowed to lapse this week, it will be the first time in recent history that federal food aid has been suspended during a government shutdown — lawmakers have previously passed legislation to keep it online under similar circumstances.
Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have proposed bills aimed at funding SNAP, including one offered by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and another authored by New Mexico Senator Ben Ray Luján. But the upper chamber appears unlikely to pass either measure before the Nov. 1 deadline.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader John Thune called Luján’s bill a “cynical attempt to buy political cover for Democrats to allow them to carry on their government shutdown even longer.”
Luján told reporters on Wednesday that it was the president, Thune and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins who were standing in the way of a bill to fund SNAP. And he slammed the administration and Republicans for refusing to tap emergency funding for the program.
“It’s bullshit,” said the New Mexico Democrat. “Forty million people are going to miss a meal in the United States of America.”
Democrats also chafed at questions from reporters about balancing their stated shutdown aims of protecting health care access with the threat of lapsing SNAP benefits for Americans who would otherwise go hungry. Schumer contended the ball was clearly in Republicans’ court, pointing out that they could fund food aid “not this weekend or tomorrow — today.”
“They are not mutually exclusive,” Neguse said of health care benefits and SNAP aid. “We are fighting for working families across our country, and I think the American people recognize that.”
The Colorado congressman reiterated that he believed the Trump administration made a “conscious, deliberate choice” not to release USDA funding to keep SNAP programs online.
“Trump is weaponizing hunger,” Schumer said. “He’s turning millions of children and seniors and veterans into political pawns. He’s choosing politics over people, cruelty over compassion.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday morning continued to pile blame on Democrats for the shutdown and the looming suspension of food aid, arguing that Democrats could avert all of the shutdown’s negative impacts if they signed onto a House-passed continuing resolution to fund federal programs.
“You’re talking about tens of millions of Americans at risk of going hungry if Senate Democrats continue this gambit instead of taking a simple vote to fund the government,” he said.
The Senate has failed more than a dozen times to approve a short-term funding patch approved by House Republicans last month. Democrats have long argued that the GOP moved the stopgap budget without negotiation and have said they would only support such a measure if coupled with a raft of policy riders, such as an extension on expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.
The government shutdown will turn one month old this week. SNAP aid is set to expire on Saturday without prompt action, leaving more than 40 million people without much-needed food assistance.
The Trump administration, which has taken unusual steps to move around federal funds to support other programs during the shutdown, has not signaled that it will do so for SNAP.
Follow @BenjaminSWeissSubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.