Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday that the food stamp program will run out of funds in two weeks because of the partial government shutdown, potentially leaving nearly 42 million people without monthly benefits. “We're going to run out of money in two weeks. So 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 said outside the White House. The Agriculture Department later in the day released an Oct. 10 letter to regional SNAP directors directing them to stop work on November benefits. "Considering the operational issues and constraints that exist in automated systems, and in the interest of preserving maximum flexibility, we are forced to direct States to hold their November issuance files and delay transmission to State EBT [electronic benefit transfer] vendors until further notice. This includes on-going SNAP benefits and daily files," the letter said. The Agriculture Department has limited options to find another source of money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, after the GOP budget reconciliation law earlier this year drained the Commodity Credit Corporation, a possible funding option. The USDA might be able to tap tariff revenue for the purpose but the Trump administration has also said it would use tariff revenue for a separate nutrition program for women and young children and to compensate farmers for lost exports. “Through October and after that, you know, it may be a problem after that,” said Senate Agriculture Appropriations Chairman John Hoeven, R-N.D., about SNAP benefits after hearing from USDA officials. The program served 41.7 million people a month in fiscal 2024, amounting to 12.3 percent of U.S. residents, according to the USDA. Benefits averaged $187.20 per participant per month at the time. Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said the USDA has few options to fund SNAP through the shutdown, including temporarily punting the responsibility to states. “There was talk early on of the states actually doing it and being reimbursed. So there's all kinds of things being floated around, but I don't have any idea exactly what we're thinking about,” Boozman said. The USDA could use its Section 32 authority to fund SNAP, he said. The Section 32 account, funded from customs receipts, sends the majority — $23 billion in fiscal 2024 — of its money to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and childhood nutrition programs, the Congressional Research Service said in an August report. CRS said the account is estimated to have $25.2 billion in permanent appropriations in fiscal 2026, up from the estimated $24.4 billion in fiscal 2025. But Boozman said that may not be enough to fund SNAP because the department is eyeing the same money to fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. “I assume they could use it for SNAP, if they could use it for WIC,” Boozman said. “But that's the problem is you've got all of these different entities that need money.” “Is there enough money to come from an individual pot, or is it going to be lots of different things?” he said. A USDA spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday that the department will “utilize tariff revenue to fund WIC for the foreseeable future.” One alternative to the Section 32 account could be the CCC, but the Congressional Budget Office said in a report this summer that the reconciliation law drained the CCC to boost spending on farm programs. Hoeven said in early October that the CCC would also be at least partly a source of funding to compensate farmers who are being hit by the sharp drop in exports, particularly to China, as Beijing retaliates for Trump’s tariffs on imports. The USDA was able to distribute SNAP benefits during the previous shutdown in 2018 and 2019, but only because the shutdown ended before it lost its authority, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Rollins also said Thursday that New York had stopped taking enrollees in the program. “Today, I think New York announced that they can't continue taking new enrollees because of the government shutdown,” she said. But Anthony Farmer, the director of public information for the state’s Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, said that New York is continuing to accept new applications. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledged in a press release Thursday that New Yorkers who rely on SNAP could lose their benefits on Nov. 1 due to the shutdown. She said the Trump administration is directing states to stop the process to issue the benefits. “I’m outraged that Washington Republicans are deliberately withholding federal funding from millions of New Yorkers who rely on SNAP to put food on the table,” Hochul said in the statement. “This is a cruel, senseless and politically motivated punishment inflicted by the Trump Administration that they have the power to avoid.”
