Agriculture Secretary Rollins: ‘Government is failing’ people who count on food stamps

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the 42 million Americans who will not receive their food stamp benefits in November because the government is shut down have a right to be angry.

Beneficiaries of the food stamp program that helps low-income Americans buy groceries, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, will not receive their monthly deposit on Saturday.

“Your government is failing you right now,” Ms. Rollins said. “Poverty is not red or blue; it is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It doesn’t matter who you voted for — or even if you voted — that if you are in a position where you can’t feed your family, and you’re relying on that $187 a month for an average family in the SNAP program, that we have failed you.”

Despite using the collective “we,” Ms. Rollins placed the blame for the shutdown on Senate Democrats who are filibustering a House-passed stopgap bill to fund the government through Nov. 21. 

“We implore the Democrats in the Senate to vote yes to get this government open and these people the benefits that they need to feed their families,” she said.

Ms. Rollins said Democrats’ “disgusting dereliction of duty” extends beyond SNAP as other essential government programs remain unfunded and federal workers go without paychecks.

“This last month has shown that the party who constantly says it puts people over politics does the complete opposite,” she said.

Senate Democrats are demanding an extension of enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies that help people afford health insurance in exchange for reopening the government. Open enrollment begins Saturday and most consumers will see the costs of their premiums more than double.

This week, Senate Democrats, led by New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, tried to pass a standalone bill to fund SNAP by unanimous consent.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican, objected, calling it a “cynical attempt to provide political cover for Democrats, to allow them to carry on their government shutdown for the long term.”

SNAP benefits are funded by the federal government but administered by the states, half of which have banded together to file a lawsuit to keep benefits flowing during the shutdown.

The lawsuit from 25 states and the District of Columbia challenges the Trump administration’s position that it cannot access a SNAP contingency fund during the shutdown and asks the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts to declare the suspension of benefits illegal.

Ms. Rollins said Democrats’ claim that the Agriculture Department can access the SNAP contingency fund and that the Trump administration is intentionally withholding benefits “is a lie.”

She said that Congress would have had to fund the underlying SNAP program for those contingency funds to be available, and lawmakers did not do so by rejecting the stopgap spending bill.

“It’s called a contingency fund, and by law, [the] contingency fund can only flow when the underlying fund is flowing,” she said. 

Ms. Rollins said the money available in the contingency fund is still insufficient to cover the full $9.2 billion cost of November SNAP benefits. 

“Even if it could flow, it doesn’t even cover half of the month of November,” she said. “So here we are, again, in two weeks, having the exact same conversation.”

Ms. Rollins said her department “band-aided and bubble gummed and duct taped this deal to get this one month of funding” for SNAP in October but can’t do that again. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who hosted Ms. Rollins at one of his now routine shutdown press conferences at the Capitol, agreed that Democrats are lying about the contingency fund and using the states’ lawsuit as a “talking point.”

“They know that’s a frivolous piece of litigation,” the Louisiana Republican said. “They know they’re going to lose. But they also know it’ll take many weeks or months to have that ultimately determined by a court, because of the way the justice system works, so they’re using it as a talking point.”

Mr. Johnson said the president “can’t just wave some magic wand and fix the mess that [Democrats] themselves have created,” despite his successful efforts to move some money around to keep the troops paid and an infant formula program funded.

“President Trump has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that if there is any way to fund these programs that are drying up now, that he will do it,” he said. “If there was any way to fund SNAP during the Democrat shutdown, you can be assured that your commander in chief would do it.” 

Democrats say the SNAP contingency fund can be used because it is a multiyear appropriation, funded through September 2026. 

“Congress already allocated that money,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Thursday. “They’re making an affirmative decision to rip SNAP benefits away from the American people as a pressure tactic. That’s what Mike Johnson said.”

He was referring to comments Mr. Johnson made on CNN when asked about whether the Trump administration would move money around to fund SNAP benefits. 

Mr. Johnson said Republicans did not want to “deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government” and allow Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and his caucus to “continue to play games with people’s paychecks, their livelihoods.” 

“If you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it, to do their basic job, and that is to reopen the government,” he said.