One in five kids is at risk of losing SNAP benefits because Congress can’t govern. D.C.’s centralized, one-size-fits-all system keeps failing families. States can do better.
The federal government shutdown is disrupting major federal programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Now one in five children nationwide risks losing benefits because Congress has failed to pass a budget. On October 30, a federal judge ordered the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to draw from SNAP’s contingency fund to cover payments, but that fund holds roughly $5–6 billion—barely enough to cover three weeks of payments for a program that spends more than $8 billion each month.
The ongoing deadlock highlights SNAP’s fragility due to its near-total reliance on federal funding. More importantly, its chronic dependency on Washington’s one-size-fits-all solutions has left it failing the very children it’s supposed to help. The best way to ensure healthy outcomes for kids and protect them from the partisan crossfire of D.C. politicking is to break the federal grip on nutrition programs.
Washington has become a permanent fixture of childhood in low-income America. The N in SNAP stands for „nutrition“, but federal food aid has routinely failed to deliver healthy diets for low-income families despite nearly $2 trillion in spending since 2000. Almost one-quarter of food purchases by SNAP households are for junk food, which undermines the efforts of doctors and other federal agencies to promote healthy diets.
