Rollins said states are responsible for distributing the restored benefits through their own system.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that full Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would be restored by Monday, Nov. 17. This came the day after the Nov. 12 passage of a funding legislation to reopen the federal government.
Rollins made her comments during a Nov. 13 interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, saying that the end of the government shutdown prompted quick action by her agency.
“We, immediately last night, began moving out, making sure that the program continues unabated, starting once the government reopened, and hopefully by the end of this week, most will receive it at the very latest on Monday,” Rollins said.
“But keep in mind, the SNAP program is funded by the federal government, but it is the 50 states and 50 different infrastructures that move that money out, which is what made it so complicated, the patchwork.”
Some states have already assured residents that the assistance will again be available to them.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey announced on Nov. 13 that SNAP has been restored, and every cardholder should be “fully funded and able to purchase food with their EBT cards.”
“The one thing I made clear from the start was that no one was going to go hungry,” Morrisey said. The shutdown “hurt a lot of people both here and around the country, but when we were tested, our people rose to the occasion.”
The SNAP payments were threatened after the 43-day government shutdown deprived the administration of access to full funding for the program that supports the grocery budgets of 42 million Americans.
The Trump administration said that using contingency funds for the entitlement program was a violation of the administration’s responsibility, and that fight went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The court on Nov. 11 ruled that the benefits should be reinstated in part, but blocked the full issuance of benefits.
That order paused the movement of billions of dollars of tariff revenue to the SNAP contingency fund to continue to support the distribution of benefits.
Following the order, recipients and food banks across the country were preparing to cope with an increase in demand for food assistance, should the congressional impasse continue.
SNAP beneficiaries can rest easy for the foreseeable future, however, as the legislation signed by the president to reopen the government included funding for the USDA, which covers SNAP, through the end of the fiscal year, even if Congress again shuts down the government early next year.
While the immediate danger for families running out of benefits has passed, Rollins said that SNAP still has some problems to fix, including investigations into fraudulent beneficiaries.
“SNAP is a broken program. SNAP is full of corruption. We found 186,000 dead people. We asked for the SNAP data earlier this year, [which has] never been turned over to the federal government before, we had 29 states turn it over, mostly red states, 21 states said ‘no,’” she told Brown.
“We’re in litigation. From just those 29 states, we have found, again, almost 200,000 dead people. It’s just, it’s remarkable.”
