Democrats have spent the last several weeks of the Schumer Shutdown claiming the USDA has contingency funding it could use to keep food stamp benefits flowing beyond Nov. 1.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) made that argument again Wednesday, saying the administration “has the funding to make sure that not a single American on November 1st or beyond goes hungry.”
“They have the money,” Jeffries said. “But they are choosing to withhold funding for SNAP because they want to punish hungry children, hungry veterans, hungry seniors, hungry women, and hungry families as part of their continued effort to hurt everyday Americans.”
At a House GOP press conference Friday, however, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins sharply pushed back, calling Jeffries’ claim an outright lie.
The event also focused on addressing waste, fraud, and abuse in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, efforts that Democrats in both chambers have opposed.
Rollins said the controversy has exposed how Democrats’ self-image as “the party of the people” has collapsed, calling their supposed defense of SNAP “reduced to cynical control over people’s lives.”
“The fact that the Democrats are saying, ‘But wait, USDA has money in their accounts’ … is a lie,” Rollins said during the news conference.
