People who rely on the federal food assistance program might not receive their benefits for the month of November because of the ongoing government shutdown.
Recipients of SNAP food assistance benefits across the country face a looming deadline: Come Nov. 1, their cards may not get refilled because of the government shutdown in Washington.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which serves nearly 42 million people each month, allocates money to states on a monthly basis. Benefits were largely uninterrupted over the past three weeks because funding for October was allocated to states before the shutdown began on Oct. 1.
But in a letter to SNAP state agency and regional directors on Oct. 10, the Department of Agriculture warned that there would not be enough funding to pay full SNAP benefits — also known as food stamps — in November if the shutdown persists.
This system is fundamentally broken. In Australia there is no path by which people on Centrelink would not have their payments processed for more than a few days. I remember a bank issue which caused a bunch of people to not get their payments on time and it was a major issue, people were absolutely livid. That was only a couple of days late and was resolved promptly with hardship temporary support available for those who really needed it.
For the system to be able to fail like this means those who designed the system want it to fail this way. They could change the funding mechanism to make sure SNAP is immune to government shutdowns if they wanted to. They have chosen not to so that they can use hurting poor people as a political weapon. Removing this weapon should be the goal of any reasonable party and it should be urgent. There are many similar funding holes that can be closed with reasonable legislation and would take away the impact of political dysfunction from the poorest and most vulnerable of society. Choosing to do otherwise is choosing that harm.
You can’t compare the us to any country that does not have masked unmarked paramilitary randomly grabbing people off the streets. That would be unfair. Its apples to oranges at this point. Im just glad it does not run the global banking system…oh…no…