Back in September, with the shutdown looming, the Trump Administration issued “lapse of funding” plans for the various Executive agencies, including the Department of Agriculture. The plans describe the “essential” operations that will continue during a shutdown. At USDA, those operations included funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. More specifically, they included paying out about $6 billion in currently available contingency funds towards the roughly $8 billion tab for November’s benefits.

The rationale for continuing the payments was straightforward. As the USDA “lapse of funding” plan explained, “Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds that can be used for State Administrative Expenses to ensure that the State can also continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown.” Indeed, the law designates the contingency funds “for use only in such amounts and at such times as may become necessary to carry out program operations.”

But the Administration has since changed its mind. The USDA plan no longer appears on the USDA website. A search for “lapse of funding plan” yields then-USDA Secretary Perdue’s 2018 shutdown plan under the first Trump Administration. That plan also provided for continued SNAP funding. Whatever plan is guiding the Trump Administration now, however, does not. As of last Friday, the following message appears on the USDA website:

“Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”

This statement has apparently become the new “lapse in funding plan” at USDA.

Perhaps Senate Democrats will capitulate to the Administration’s demands, and relieve Senate Republicans from doing away with the filibuster and taking full ownership over a congressional role that appears increasingly superfluous. Or perhaps Mike Johnson will surprise everyone and hastily reconvene the House for the first time in over a month to deliberate over an alternative spending bill that might entice Senate Democrats’ votes.

But the conventional wisdom says otherwise. So what does that mean for consumers?

The most obvious fall out will hit the roughly 41 million people in a household receiving SNAP benefits. 39% of these beneficiaries are children. 20% are elderly. 10% are “nonelderly individuals with a disability.” About 3% are veterans. Most SNAP households live in poverty, with the average $177 per person monthly SNAP allotment lifting about 30% of households above the poverty line. None of the 41 million are “illegal aliens.” Under a 1996 law, immigrants to the U.S. are not eligible for SNAP benefits until five years after they have established lawful permanent residence. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law this past July 4, additionally closes SNAP to several legally present immigrant categories, including refugees, asylees and human trafficking survivors, and makes other changes, most significantly new work requirements, expected to result in around 4 million participants losing eligibility, but those reforms are still going into effect.

Already, the shutdown has led states like Minnesota to stop accepting new applications for federal food assistance benefits, meaning that someone who has recently lost their job—perhaps one of the thousands of federal employees directly fired by the Trump Administration, or one of the many state employees terminated because of federal funding cuts—may have to rely on food pantries or other charity even if Congress can overcome its current gridlock in time to avert a lapse in payments to current beneficiaries. These disruptions will exacerbate an already stressed system, as food banks lost $500 million in federal funding earlier this year as a result of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts.

If tens of millions of current SNAP recipients find themselves without checks next week, expect to see plenty of foodbank line footage reminiscent of Spring 2020. These images will signify a calamitous insult to public health. As researchers have documented, food insecurity leads people to skip medications, drives depression and other mental illness, and increases the odds of chronic conditions like diabetes—which affects 13% of Americans living below the poverty line—becoming life threatening.

Cutting off SNAP benefits will also have lasting financial repercussions. A 2022 Federal Reserve Board analysis found that reducing SNAP benefits led to more consumer debt. Specifically, the study compared jurisdictions that adopted new work requirements for SNAP beneficiaries classified as “able-bodied adults without dependents”  versus those that did not. It concluded that “borrowers in counties with work requirements applied for more new accounts, sought increases in credit limits, increased their total debt amounts on retail and credit cards, and experienced an elevated risk of having past due card debts.” These financial repercussions followed from rules that affected a comparatively tiny segment of SNAP beneficiaries. Removing support for the broader class of beneficiaries— 1 in 8 Americans—may trigger a cascade of economic decline given the already precarious state of consumer finance.

Fortunately, saving SNAP has bipartisan support. Earlier this week, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley published a plea in the N.Y. Times for Congress to vote on restoring SNAP, arguing “no American should go to bed hungry.” For their part, Democratic senators have coalesced around similar legislation that would also fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). At the same time, 25 Democratic-led states have sued the Trump Administration to use the SNAP contingency funds to keep the program running for another month. While Congress remains miles apart on a path forward to reopen the government, and while the GOP-led House is, once again, out of session, millions of families are left in limbo. As the Administration decides to cut off SNAP benefits at the end of this month, we urge lawmakers to recognize the disastrous impact of inaction and come together to provide immediate relief to the nation’s most vulnerable consumers.