The government shutdown has entered its third week. Besides the 800,000 government workers who have lost their paychecks and are now living on their savings or finding other ways to make ends meet, there is a larger group of people who will be directly, immediately, and critically affected by the shutdown in a few weeks if there is no resolution.
There are 40.3 million people in the United States who use the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) to help feed their families. These benefits for February will be paid out early, and then there will be no SNAP beginning in March. Already 2,500 grocers have quit accepting SNAP because their SNAP licensing was not renewed before the shutdown began on Dec. 22.
The WIC program, which provides 7.3 million mothers and children under 5 with food, milk, formula, juice and other staples, will probably also run out of funding by March 1. Free and reduced lunch and after-school lunch programs will probably also no longer be available by March. TEFAP, which funds the commodities program that brings food to individuals, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, soup kitchens (like Sunday Soups), and programs like Meals on Wheels, will no longer be available.
As if that isnt enough to worry about, millions of people could lose their housing. Rent subsidies provided to farm workers, senior citizens, and people with disabilities will not be available. Landlords wont be paid, and evictions will begin. Section 8 housing will end in February. Low-income housing funds will end in March.
We are looking at a nation where millions of our most vulnerable people are taking the hardest hit, with incredibly dire consequences, to pay for a border wall. We are looking at people who have jobs who cant work and have no savings, or couples who both work for the government who are now navigating the world of food banks for the first time. We are looking at parents who already struggle to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads facing the worst possible outcome for their situation. Children who live in poverty and eat their main meals at school will go hungry.
Parents who have no income or who are disabled and rely on TANF, SNAP, and low-income housing to help provide a little stability for their families are looking at food banks as their only source of food and at homelessness if HUD or government rent subsidies stop working.
The elderly who rely on small amounts of SNAP benefits and have a very limited fixed income will also have to rely on food banks and make, at a greater rate, the hard choice between food, medication, utilities, or housing.
How does one choose which basic item of survival to give up?
Our economy will suffer. Those millions of dollars that should be paid out to government workers are not being put back into the economy, and for every $1 in SNAP benefits spent, $1.70 goes back into the economy.
There is a national crisis concerning the wall, but it has nothing to do with the physical structure or the people on the southern side of the border and everything to do with the poorest and most vulnerable people to the north.
Kindness matters!
