With federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars set to expire at the end of next week due to the federal government shutdown, Gov. Ned Lamont announced the state is providing $3 million out of state Medicaid funds to CT Foodshare to supply food banks across Connecticut and help meet the needs of 360,000 residents who rely on SNAP.
“On Saturday they stop replenishing the SNAP cards, it goes dark for almost 400,000 residents,” Lamont said during a press conference held at Foodshare headquarters in Wallingford, flanked by numerous lawmakers. “This is a time we want to step up and help out.”
“We wanted to pull the trigger and take care of people in time for the cards going off,” Lamont said. “We’re gonna try this out for a couple weeks and see what the need is going forward. Hopefully they’ll be able to solve this impasse down in Washington, I think it’s long overdue.”
CEO of Foodshare Jason Jakubowski, said the $3 million will cover roughly six million meals and last about two weeks, but it is impossible to make up for the amount of food purchased under SNAP. Even before the shutdown, Jukubowski says, the amount of food and funding they were receiving from the federal government had already begun to dwindle, leaving them without enough food to distribute.
“Things weren’t great to begin with on September 30th when we got into this situation,” Jakubowski said, adding that at the same time, they are serving more households. “Now we’re facing our nightmare scenario – 360,000 Connecticut residents on SNAP gone on Saturday.”
“For every meal that we provide at this food bank, SNAP provides nine,” Jakubowski said. “There is not enough food at this food bank or every food bank in the country put together to make up for the loss we’re going to see in SNAP.”
The funds will supply food banks for a couple of weeks as state and federal officials and lawmakers wait to see if the federal government will resume amid a budget battle between Republicans and Democrats. If the shutdown continues, states will soon have to grapple with the financial fallout.
According to Department of Social Services Commissioner Andrea Barton Reeves, the federal government will not allow Connecticut to backfill the SNAP cards and indicated that any states that do so, will face monetary consequences.
Furthermore, Representative Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, said under existing law there is a $6 billion contingency fund to support SNAP benefits during a shutdown, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced in a memo that they will not release the funds.
“There is money to fund this program,” DeLauro said. “There is as we speak at least five billion dollars in contingency funds that by law must be used to pay out SNAP benefits and make sure families have access to the support they need.”
“What they are doing, holding back on this contingency fund, is illegal,” DeLauro said, adding that she and her colleagues sent a letter to U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins requesting the funds be released, but thus far administration officials are refusing to do so.
Republican House Leader, Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, also spoke at the press conference, offering a “Republican perspective.”
“We share the concerns of everyone with what has happened with the Connecticut SNAP program, the funding coming to an end hopefully temporarily,” Candelora said. “No question, we are broken at the federal level. There is an impasse that no one wants to break, and people are being leveraged now, people are being hurt.”
Adding that the $3 million will not last long and can’t make up for the loss of SNAP benefits, Candelora indicated his caucus is ready to work with the governor to find other ways “to get more funds into these programs if we see this problem become long-term.”
Earlier in the day, Candelora issued a statement on behalf of House Republicans saying Democrat leaders in the General Assembly are working with the state treasurer to create a “slush fund” to “maneuver around our state’s financial controls,” and urging the governor to use Connecticut’s $4 billion Rainy Day Fund, which is meant to be used in times of crisis.
“They’re choosing politics over immediate action when families may need help within days,” Candelora said in a press statement. “If Democrats truly view this as a crisis, and their repeated news conferences and statements suggest that, then the Governor should declare an emergency and solve this problem.”
Senate Democrat Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, on the other hand, issued a statement saying President Donald Trump “is purposefully starving Connecticut residents in a cruel political stunt.”
“It is unconscionable that the president of the United States would heartlessly take food off the tables of children, seniors, and working families,” Looney said. “The Republican federal shutdown is causing very real harm in every corner of our state.”
Jakubowski said that Foodshare released $1 million of its own reserves to provide food to federal workers who are no longer getting paid, setting up distribution centers at airports to provide food to Transportation Security Administration employees affected by the shutdown.
He added that, unlike during the COVID pandemic, which saw food distribution centers overwhelmed, Foodshare is using its existing partnerships to get food into every municipality in Connecticut in an orderly fashion.
“This will be a very careful, methodical, and equitable distribution,” Jakubowski said. “This helps, and this helps in a big way, this does not solve the problem.”
