As We Said, Government Shutdown Won’t Stop Snap, Food Stamps

A few days back we predicted that the government shutdown over Trump’s border wall wouldn’t influence the distribution of Snap benefits, or food stamps as most of us still call them. This wasn’t because we had some inside knowledge it was just because it was clear and obvious that no one was going to stop tens of million of people from getting their food over said border wall. That’s just not the way that politics works.

Politics simply doesn’t work by denying hand out goodies to tens of millions of people. The only way this would ever happen if it would reliably buy the votes of a larger group of tens of millions of people. And that’s just not going to happen over Snap.

So, this was obviously going to happen:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Food stamp benefits are guaranteed through February despite shutdown, USDA says
Millions of Americans who depend on food stamps will receive benefits to buy food through February despite the ongoing partial government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday.[/perfectpullquote]

Of course. As we said ourselves:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]There’s a certain amount of muttering that the government shutdown – prompted by Trump’s insistence that he really, but just really, wants a great big wall – will start to affect the distribution of SNAP benefits, food stamps to you and me. This isn’t going to happen, the fix will be in long before that happens. No, I’m not insisting that the government shutdown will be solved by February although I fully expect it to be so. Rather, that those worrying about babbies running out of stale crusts and government cheese are rather missing the way the system works. They simply don’t shut down those parts of government that will lead to rioting on the streets, sure, they may be politicians but they’re not that damn stupid.[/perfectpullquote]

Some fix would be in to make sure that the benefits were indeed paid out:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Food stamp recipients will have access to their full benefits for February, even if the partial government shutdown continues, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced Tuesday night. USDA said they will work with states to load benefits onto recipients’ cards by Jan. 20, just within the deadline for a provision that allows them to pay out benefits, even without a budget. [/perfectpullquote]

Yes, a fix. We didn’t need to be possessed of genius to see that this would happen. Just old enough to have seen politicians at work and know how they’d work now.