About 1.7 million people in Illinois receive food-assistance benefits and about 8,000 federal workers in the state are not getting paychecks.
The partial government shutdown may feel like an East Coast problem — President Donald Trump feuding with Democrats in Congress, snaking lines at New York’s LaGuardia Airport — but the longer it drags on, the more it will affect people here.
The worries include how long federal food-assistance programs will last and how furloughed federal workers will pay their mortgages or rent.
At the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which distributes food to about 700 soup kitchens, pantries and other agencies across Cook County, there’s considerable anxiety over future funding, in particular, for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“We view SNAP as the frontline defense against hunger,” said Greg Trotter, a spokesman for the food depository. “If benefits are disrupted for almost 40 million Americans who receive SNAP benefits, there is no way food banks like ours could make up those benefits.”
As of 2018, about 1.7 million people in Illinois receive SNAP benefits.
The program is funded through the end of January.
“The great uncertainty is what happens in February if the shutdown continues,” Trotter said.
Trotter said his agency and others hope to get an update later this week from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program.
“We’ve not been given any real guidance in terms of how much is in the reserves,” Trotter said.
