With the government shutdown now eclipsing one month, food assistance that millions of Americans rely upon — including hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans and tens of thousands in Hamilton County — is set to lapse on Saturday, as Republican officials at all levels of government refuse to reconfigure budgets to maintain funding for food stamps.
The looming lapse for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is due to the President Donald Trump administration’s refusal to use emergency funds within the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget to prolong SNAP funds into November.
Echoing the Trump administration, the Tennessee state government, headed by GOP Gov. Bill Lee, is refusing to tap the state’s $2 billion worth of emergency reserve funds to cover SNAP benefits for Tennesseans.
Instead of ensuring low-income Tennesseans have food to eat, as any humane and effective government should, the governor launched feedtn.org, a website, Lee’s office said in a press release, that Tennesseans can use to find resources during “the Democrat-led federal government shutdown.”