Speaking Freely on the SNAP Crisis

Let's be clear about the stakes in President Trump's decision to withhold SNAP benefits during the Republican shutdown of the government.

Some 560,000 South Carolinians will lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance benefits.  About half of these adult recipients have children in their households.  Overall, at least ten percent of the entire population of South Carolina is now facing hunger.

In Dorchester County, slightly more than eight percent of households receive SNAP benefits, and 10.7 percent of Dorchester County households already live below the poverty line.  

In September, before the shutdown, the federal government sent South Carolina $104 million to pay for SNAP benefits.   The notion that a sum this large can be replaced by private philanthropy is absurd, but that is where Trump has left us.  It's part of Trump's plan to force the states, or private donors, to pay for basic government "services" long provided by FEMA in natural disasters or HHA during public health crises.

Let's also be clear about who is to blame for the SNAP crisis.  It's not Democrats, despite how often the puppet House Speaker Mike Johnson says it is.  Republicans control the Presidency, both chambers of the Legislature, and a shifting majority of the Supreme Court.  They run the government. They created this problem. They can solve it.  Trump is the CEO.  It's his job to keep his government open.  Democrats have no obligation to solve this problem for him.  

(In 2013, as it happens, Trump himself said that a government shutdown shows "the President is weak."  He was right for once.)

Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that only the wealthy are part of his America.  He cares little about the rest of us, whether the issue is food, the price of health care, birthright citizenship, or freedom of speech.  The brutality and randomness of ICE attacks on supposed immigrants is further evidence of his worldview.

Trump's claim that by law he can't pay the benefits if the government is shut down is false.  During Trump's first term, during the government shutdown in December 2018, he told the states they could use contingency funds for SNAP.  Now he says it's illegal.  But that's Trump.  The law is what he says it is.

Nor is it surprising that Trump won't engage with the Legislature to solve this crisis.  He prefers to waltz around East Asia instead, raising and lowering his tariffs, or to threaten Venezuela and Nigeria with military action.  He has no regard for the Legislative branch.  He has sidelined it entirely, now that his Great Tax Giveaway Bill passed.  He prefers to govern by executive decree.  

He has stated publicly that he needs nothing more from Congress.  Believe him. 

He now wants to use his manufactured SNAP crisis to force the spineless Republican Senators to ditch the filibuster so that Democrats are completely sidelined.

What can South Carolinians do?  They can contribute to local food banks or to the statewide One SC Fund activated by Governor McMaster, who is nevertheless loathe to criticize Trump for the food disaster he has visited on the state.

They can support Democratic candidates running for Governor and the US House and Senate in 2026.  They can work to elect a new State House Representative for District 98 in the special election on January 6.

Finally, they can remind their neighbors that it's not only the recipients of SNAP benefits who will suffer.  So will the farmers who provide the food and the supermarkets that sell it.  Sensible people can agree that using hunger as a weapon against Americans for political purposes is corrosive to public health, the economy, and democracy.