Introduction to the SNAP Funding Cutoff
Natasha McClendon keeps a cabinet in her Englewood home stocked with possible sides, like potatoes and macaroni pasta, to feed her two school-age daughters and disabled husband. But the family has no meat and just ran out of frozen vegetables to make a meal.
The family was due to get about $1,100 next week for groceries through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But they are among the nearly 2 million Illinois residents who will likely have to find another way to buy food or go without as the federal government shutdown stretches into its fourth week.
The SNAP funding cutoff, which will begin Nov. 1 unless Congress or the White House takes action, couldn’t have come at a worse time for McClendon and her husband who were trying to slowly save up to rent a new apartment or even buy their first home. Their landlord said he is doubling their rent from $750 to an unaffordable $1,500.
“Now we got to take this cash that we were going to put into the savings to buy food to make sure that these babies eat,” said McClendon, 49, who works as a substitute teacher assistant for Chicago Public Schools.
Natasha McClendon at the South Side St. Sabina Parish food pantry where she goes once a month to help stretch what she earns and normally gets from SNAP go further.
The Federal Government Shutdown and SNAP Funding
The U.S. Department of Agriculture funded SNAP during the last government shutdown in 2019, but said this time it won’t fund the program using its contingency funding.
Some Republicans, led by U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), have filed bills in both chambers to fund the program during the shutdown. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), have also offered their own standalone SNAP patch. Neither effort appeared likely to resolve the issue by Saturday.
Meanwhile, a coalition of Democrat-led states, including Illinois, sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, asking a federal court to force the use of emergency funding for SNAP.
The USDA’s is taking the stance that the contingency funds can only supplement money that has already been appropriated for programs. They say that has not happened since a funding bill was never approved, said Lindsay Allen, a health economist at Northwestern University.
“It’s not that they don’t have the money — they have money,” Allen said. “… But they are saying that their hands are tied here, which is a different interpretation than we’ve seen before.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is also set to sign an executive order Thursday, directing $20 million in state funding to support food banks across Illinois starting Nov. 1. The Illinois Department of Human Services, which administers SNAP, said the state cannot replace the $350 million the state receives each month for the federally funded program.
“SNAP has never been withheld from the American people during a government shutdown until now,” IDHS said in a statement.
The Impact on Families
McClendon said the government should have provided families like hers more time to prepare for the funding freeze, pointing out that SNAP was not mentioned as being in threat at the start of the shutdown.
“It’s not fair to us to have to suffer because Trump and the Democrats and the Republicans can’t get along,” McClendon said.
Another mother, Aubrey Lewandowski of suburban Palos Hills, says she’s also scrambling after getting a text message that the food support she relies on to help feed her four young children — two of whom have special needs — won’t be coming in November.
Lewandowski, 41, works as a delivery driver and plans to pick up more orders through DoorDash, Instacart and other apps to bump up the $500 to $1,000 she usually makes a week. This will mean more time away from her kids, and even more discipline at the grocery store.
“Especially with children with special needs, I should be enhancing their abilities, doing things with them, not having to have them sit in a car while I drive around,” Lewandowski told WBEZ. “We have so much wealth here in America … Just seeing how everybody only takes care of their own here, it’s absurd.”
Nearly 31% of Chicagoans in households receiving SNAP benefits were 17 years old or younger, according to an analysis of data from the 2023 American Community Survey.
For her family of five, Lewandowski receives about $1,150 a month in SNAP support. It helps her buy produce and things like eggs and milk — items hard to come by at food pantries — for her children, who are all under 14. She also visits two food pantries regularly, but with the SNAP cutoff, she said she is planning to look for more locations for help.
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