If Americans going hungry cannot force Republicans and Democrats back to the negotiating table to end the government shutdown, nothing will.
And it looks like no relief will be coming for hungry families. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) had a sharp exchange of words on the Senate floor about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits not going out on the first of the month.
Lujan has a separate bill from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has a bill to keep the benefits coming during the shutdown. Lujan’s bill would also allow money for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to continue to go out. Lujan excoriated the Trump administration for removing the contingency plan for SNAP from its website.
“I know the difference of good soil and the bulls*** that goes in it,” he said during a press conference. Later during floor debate, Thune raised his voice and accused Democrats of dishonesty.
“What Democrats are doing here, they’re making plans to keep the shutdown going, and they realize all of a sudden, 29 days in, that this is a real consequence, real-life pain for American families,” the usually mild-mannered Thune said on the floor.
Thune’s saying this basically forecloses any chance that there will be any relief for people going hungry. House Speaker Mike Johnson keeping the House out of session makes it even less likely. People will go without food while everyone pretends to care about SNAP.
But this whole exchange reeks of manure and is only half as useful.
As Inside Washington said earlier this week, Thune’s excoriating Democrats for shutting down the government might sound more sincere had he not ushered through a bill that included massive restrictions to SNAP, which included lowering the age at which children are considered dependents to 14 and forcing states with high error rates to shoulder the cost of the program.
It might have come off as more sincere had his conference not included a huge carveout for those requirements for Alaska to bribe Sen. Lisa Murkowski to vote for the bill.
Murkowski told The Independent this week that SNAP provisions should force people to negotiate, even more so than the federal workers’ union saying that the shutdown needs to end.
“And so if there’s something that is the precipitating factor, I think it’s not that the unions have changed, maybe, but that you have this date that is so pivotal,” she said.
Again, Murkowski’s words might be more sincere if she actually tried to force Thune’s hand by building a coterie of senators to craft a deal, then do what the Senate does best: jam it down the throat of the Senate.
Democrats do not have clean hands on this. Thune may be disingenuous, but he’s not wrong.
“And as a pastor, I’m thinking about families within the next few days who will be suffering as a result of the games that politicians play,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who once depended on the program growing up, told The Independent.
“Let’s be clear, the Trump administration is choosing to use hungry children as pawns in a political game. I think that’s deeply cynical, but I’ll be doing everything I can,” Warnock told The Independent.
But Democrats had to know that when they decided to block continuing resolutions to reopen the government that a newly emboldened Trump would play hardball and try to make them bleed.
Yes, the Department of Agriculture had a contingency plan for SNAP, and yes, Trump kept SNAP going during the 2018-2019 shutdown. They had to expect that Trump, with Project 2025 mastermind Russell Vought by his side, would wield his executive authority with reckless abandon and they must have calculated that.
If they decided that letting Trump cut off food for hungry families would be a worthwhile fight in the name of saving health care, they should just say they made that calculus and not point fingers.
And of course, the president deserves the blame more than anyone else. The Trump administration chose not to keep the aid going out. Trump could, at any moment, force Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries into a room, give up something each of them wanted but also give them each something they wanted and end the shutdown.
Instead, the president is in Asia and tearing down the East Wing to make room for his ballroom. Nothing happens in Washington without Trump’s consent and he’s perfectly content to let many Americans, including many of his most enthusiastic supporters, go hungry.
To borrow from Lujan, if anyone was sincere about stopping hunger, they’d cut the B.S. and get straight to work.
