Trump’s shutdown is not just political theater for 42 million who rely on food stamps

A quiet dread is settling over the kitchens and grocery lines of New Jersey, a cold calculation being made between a carton of milk and a loaf of bread. In the ledger of a federal shutdown, a line item is about to be extinguished, and for the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—SNAP, or food stamps—the political theater in Washington is about to become a very real and personal hunger game.

The arithmetic is as brutal as it is simple. The money, officials say, will run out at the end of October. political theater in Washington

The machinery that loads those essential benefits onto the electronic cards for November has been ordered to halt.

The consequence is that in at least 25 states, from California to New Jersey, the first of November will not bring a new allotment for groceries. It will bring silence from a system that, until now, has hummed along with the reliability of a monthly tide.

This is not a matter of discretionary luxuries. This is about the average benefit of $187 per month, a sum that is the difference between a bare cupboard and one with food.

The pause, as the bureaucrats so delicately put it, is timed with a cruelty that would be almost artistic if it weren’t so tragic—it lands just before the Thanksgiving holiday.

The irony is as thick as holiday gravy: a nation potentially giving thanks while a multitude of its citizens are told the federal larder is padlocked.

The blame, of course, is being passed around Capitol Hill with the fervor of a hot potato. The administration points fingers at Democrats for holding the budget hostage. Democrats fire back about reckless cuts to healthcare.

Meanwhile, in Mount Holly, a man named Rick Grover, who has come to depend on that monthly assistance, offers a perspective unclouded by political spin. For him, the consequence is not a talking point. It is the prospect of “going to bed a little hungry some nights.”

And here is the real marvel of this manufactured crisis. The very architects of this impasse, the members of Congress and the President, will continue to draw their salaries without interruption.

They will dine well while the food safety inspectors who ensure their meals are safe may be working without pay, and while the families who wonder how to stretch a can of beans are told to look to overwhelmed food banks for salvation.

We are told this is how the system works, that some spending is “mandatory” and some is “discretionary,” as if hunger itself understands such distinctions.

We are told that states are scrambling, that emergency funds are dwindling, that it will take days to reboot the system even if a deal is struck.

New Jersey officials are warning families that November SNAP benefits may be delayed.

“So they won’t be able to go to the grocery store or the farmers market or any place else that’s an eligible retailer and buy food for their families,” said Michael Wilson, a deputy commissioner with the New Jersey Department of Human Services.

The state was told by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, if the shutdown continues, there will be insufficient funds to pay full SNAP benefits for 42 million people across the country.

These are the excuses of a government that has forgotten its fundamental compact with the people it serves.

To threaten the primary sustenance of one in eight Americans is to play a dangerous game with the social fabric of the nation. It is a policy forged not in prudent governance, but in the fiery crucible of ideological warfare, where the most vulnerable are used as pawns.

The message being sent from the marbled halls of power is as clear as it is chilling: your dinner table is negotiable.