Prolonged shutdown would leave millions without food stamps
38 replies, posted
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prolonged-shutdown-could-leave-millions-without-food-stamps-hit-small-n955136
Millions of Americans could face going without the benefit that allows them to purchase food if the government shutdown continues into February.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps, costs an average of around $4.8 billion per month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But because of the government shutdown, the program has only $3 billion in emergency reserves for February.
More than 19 million households in the United States receive food stamps, accounting for nearly 39 million people. Each household receives on average $245.28 per month. But
because of the shutdown, USDA has no money to pay for the program in the ensuing months. The agency also had to furlough approximately 95 percent of Food and Nutrition
Services, the office that oversees the SNAP program.
If the $1.8 billion shortfall for February benefits were spread evenly across the 19 million households that receive SNAP benefits, each would see a cut of about $90 per month for their
overall grocery budget, according to Dottie Rosenbaum, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). If the political standoff that began Dec. 22 continued into
March, these households would receive no money to buy food.
“Even if the President and Congress resolve the shutdown by February, depending on the decisions the Administration makes in the coming one to two weeks, households could
experience a substantial delay in receiving their full SNAP allotment for February because of the operational challenges that states and EBT contractors face,” Rosenbaum said in an
email.
/r/t_d sees this as epicly owning the libs, as killing two birds with one stone, it's absolutely disgusting.
someone please stop me from so devotedly lurking the scummiest places on the internet
Stop
I tried :c
Jesus fucking christ, those fuckers are evil.
I wonder how the US would get if this went on for a considerable amount of time, Hungry people, tax returns, flights all messed up. Seems like a huge catalyst for civil unrest
These people LOVE whoring the npc meme but fail to see the absolute irony.
the Fox News Facebook page is pretty cancerous too but I keep checking it, hoping to see some semblance of sanity. we must be masochists.
almost like everything people have been saying about how echo chambers and dehumanization via memes is a very real and dangerous thing that people have been ignoring
your hip and trendy NPC memes aren't just memes, stop pretending otherwise
Maybe Trump is hoping this will give him the terrorist attack he wants to use to seize control.
How stupid. So long as they renounce citizenship. If they can't pay for their kids lunches then I doubt they can pony up the $2200 the US requires to renounce
I feel like that depending on how long this shut down goes, this will be one of the bigger fuck ups Trump will have in office.
Imagine if you could point your phone at somebody and see if they made comments like this. It's the quickest way to excommunicate people and make them regret this sort of behavior.
this is what the republicans want to eliminate all government aid, its also ironically the conservative states that defer all aid management to the government that will be hit the most, other more progressive states will try to do what they can.
Just how deep do we plan on going down this rabbit hole?
At what point do we expect to reach Wonderland?
1. Idiots in rust belt make country worse by voting for trump
2. Wealthier liberals leave to canada or whatever
3. Idiots in rust belt can no longer rely on the welfare from the wealthier states, starve to death
That's exactly why I love the NPC meme.
I feel as though we are simply not getting the picture that the chaos and dysfunction caused by this shutdown are actually the intended outcome rather than simply side effects.
It is no accident that the outcome we are witnessing staves off federal investigations, enrages and polarizes voters, and undermines faith in government and democracy (a major goal of Russian foreign policy).
Worst of all, Trump toying with the notion of declaring a national emergency is a textbook move from the authoritarian playbook.
The last two times there was actual mass economic and domestic unrest the Democrats won very bigly and cleaned up the mess, he's just preparing the nation for a massive blue wave again. If he doesn't become
president for life that is.
Lol will be fun having to ask my mom for more money for food and having to spend christmas money I would've spent on other things.
We have gone from "mexico will pay for the wall" to "I will let poor people go hungry unless middle class americans pay for the wall".
I really hope the Democrats hold steady and don't reward this nonsense.
Even if there were some among them with dissenting opinions, we'd never see them. Not in t_d, anyway.
Do Trump supporters even have enough self-awareness to count as sentient any more? Let alone sapient.
Here we go again with the dehumanization shit. You know why this is wrong.
It's funny banter but it's dangerous.
for a subreddit obssessed with the idea of free speech, they ban literally any dissenting opinions.
Shutdowns are constantly used to attack "non-essential" services like food stamps programs that people can quite literally die without, while massive military funding will continue unchecked. Beyond the political show they cause there's always the backdoor trick of attacking civil servants as "non-essential" while coalescing government power on the security apparatus, and Dem leadership has failed to meaningfully challenge that premise each time. I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to think this is another reason Trump isn't just willing to let this go on for over a year but seems *eager* to do so. This is really feeling closer to the fall of the Weimar Republic everyday.
ELI5 of what "shutdown" is?
almost everything in the government - from things like food stamps and benefits, to infrastructure, like roads, to courts and the payment of federal employees - uses money that Congress or the president says it has, rather than stuff it actually owns itself. so a government shutdown is when either Congress (the House or Senate) or the president refuses to sign a bill saying how much money the government has, and what the money will be put towards - usually because one of the parties doesn't agree with what the money would be used for, in this case that stupid fucking wall.
so basically the entire government just straight up doesn't have any money until a funding bill gets signed, and can't legally function as a government because they haven't been given permission to use federal funding.
They'd be complete idiots too. That's why they're not going to. This is such a winning issue for them that it will probably singlehandedly give them the 2020 election - not just the presidency, but the Senate too. Nobody other than Trump's deplorable base wants the wall, and if the Republicans keep this bullshit up for another year or two, nobody other than the MAGA crowd will vote for them.
I don't mean to sound alarmist, but throughout history food security or scarcity has been one of the major issues tying into unrest. Where it is the result of natural circumstance (broadly) it does help, but if it seems to be the result of someone's choice (whether it is or not), things don't go well at all. If this shutdown persists, when considering no-pay, I think that this issue is going to explode.
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