Billions in Food Stamps to Come Early!
The partial government shutdown, hours away from becoming the longest in U.S. history, means that millions of low-income Americans are about to get their February food stamps a few weeks early — an unprecedented payout of billions of dollars in benefits that has states and grocery stores scrambling.
After raising alarm that the food-stamp program could run out of funding for February, the Trump administration announced this week that it had come up with a way to bankroll more than $4.8 billion in benefits next month — with just one catch: Benefits for the nearly 39 million people enrolled in the program must be paid out by Jan. 20, weeks earlier than usual.
The workaround creates serious logistical and communication challenges and could lead to widespread confusion about how benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, will be distributed in coming months, if the spending impasse continues. The federal government has experience issuing SNAP benefits on short notice in a single state or region in response to natural disasters, but a single payout of this size and scale is uncharted territory — offering a new window into the shutdown's far-reaching effects.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/11/shutdown-food-stamp-scramble-benifits-1081210
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