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And public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | |
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We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now to discuss government food aid is Gina Plata Nino. | ||
| She is Interim SNAP Director for the Food Research and Action Center. | ||
| Welcome to the program, Gina. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| So first, could you tell us about the Food Action, the Food Research and Action Center? | ||
| What's your mission and how you guys are funded? | ||
| Yes, we're known as FRAC, and we work to improve the nutrition, the well-being, the health of individuals who are suffering from poverty-related hunger. | ||
| And we do this through equitable partnerships, by working with state partners all across the country. | ||
| And we're a nonprofit organization funded by grants from philanthropy and other organizations. | ||
| I want to start with the latest news, which was the rulings by several judges, a couple of judges, asking the Trump administration to pay out SNAP benefits for the month of November out of contingency funds and possibly other funding. | ||
| Can you tell us a little bit about that? | ||
| What prompted that and how that would work? | ||
| Yes, so to start off, we didn't need to get there, right? | ||
| FRAC and other organizations have been telling the administration even before the shutdown happened about asking about what their plan is. | ||
| USDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has contingency funds, what is at issue here, and reserves that they can utilize in order to be able to pay benefits. | ||
| Benefits today should have gone on time if the Secretary and the administration had acted accordingly. | ||
| Last Friday, USDA sent out a memo that violated the Hatch Act because it was incredibly political, but it also said that the contingency funds that advocates like ours had been saying for weeks to be utilized for SNAP so that benefits could go out on time were only in case of an emergency and that department lacked the authority, | ||
| which is something we know is not true because they have utilized those funds to already pay some administrative expenses and have utilized the reserves to pay for other priorities of the administration. | ||
| So, Gina, are you saying that they have used that during this shutdown? | ||
| They have used some of those contingency funds? | ||
| Yes, they have utilized some of the contingency funds to pay the administrative cost expenses for the states. | ||
| So the federal government pays 50%, the state pays 50%, but they did utilize, it's our understanding, that they did utilize some of the contingency funds to pay administrative state share expenses. | ||
| So what are they saying that that contingency fund is used for or should be used for? | ||
| In the memo specifically that they cited last Friday, it said, not this two Fridays ago, specifically said that it was in terms of a disaster. | ||
| And so about a dozen attorney generals that said, we need answers. | ||
| What do you mean you can't utilize this? | ||
| No response from USDA. | ||
| So then they on Tuesday, they file a lawsuit led by the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Andrea Campbell, asking that USDA utilize its authority that Congress had given them, that is in the Nutrition Act, which is what governs SNAP, and utilize those contingency funds in order to fund SNAP benefits. | ||
| And you're right, there were two lawsuits. | ||
| It was the one by the Attorney Generals, but there was another lawsuit also filed by national nonprofit organizations along with municipalities and other state nonprofits that also said, please utilize these contingency funding. | ||
| And you also terminated some waivers that states were depending on, ensure that those continue on to the end. | ||
| On Thursday, the hearing for the Massachusetts one, because it was filed in Massachusetts, was heard. | ||
| And the judge gave an inkling. | ||
| There was a lot of oral argument where the judge seemed to be asking questions as to why USDA didn't think it had utilized the authority, what it had done in the past, and said that it would issue an order on Friday, which she did. | ||
| And then the Rhode Island hearing also happened on Friday. | ||
| Both are similar and different in a way. | ||
| Both specifically have given USDA, it captures the whole of the nation, because even though the states asked for the injunction during all your argument, the judge seemed to say that this would apply as a whole. | ||
| And that's the way the SNAP program works. | ||
| You can't choose and pick over states. | ||
| It would apply as a whole. | ||
| And so the judge seemed to say USDA has until Monday, the administration has us till Monday to decide how they're going to utilize the contingency funds in order to fund SNAP. | ||
| And the Rhode Island one, the one that was heard in Rhode Island, actually goes a little bit further and says that USDA should also find a way to figure out if they can utilize their reserve funding so that they can fully fund SNAP. | ||
| Because currently we do know that the contingency funds are not sufficient to cover the full month of SNAP benefits. | ||
| So that's what I was going to ask you, Gina, because it's about $9 billion to cover the entire month, and there's about $5 billion in reserves. | ||
| So how would that work? | ||
| Would it just be maybe a little bit more than two weeks? | ||
| What do you think is going to happen with that? | ||
| Well, we've been saying that there is this fund called Section 32 that the Secretary of Agriculture has tapped in to fund WIC, right? | ||
| There is over $30 billion worth of reserves that the Secretary can easily tap into, has the authority to do so in order to offset so that full benefits will go in. | ||
| So there's two things that can happen. | ||
| We don't know how the administration is going to respond, but it takes a while, right? | ||
| Because it's not as simple as turning on a switch. | ||
| The states have to do these issuance files where they say, this is how many people are eligible. | ||
| This is how much they're entitled to. | ||
| They send that to something called an EBT processor vendor. | ||
| There are two main ones in the U.S. that pretty much have half and half of the states. | ||
| Those EBT processors capture all of the cases and say to the Department of Agriculture, this is how much money we need in order for individuals when they swipe their card to have benefits in the card. | ||
| USDA takes those numbers and says, okay, here's your letter of credit. | ||
| Take it over and begin. | ||
| Then the EBT processors have it. | ||
| And so when that person walks into an eligible participating EBT retailer and they scan their card, that money is transferred. | ||
| So it's not as simple as that. |