If SNAP benefits cease Nov. 1, Erie’s Cynthia Torres will feel impact
Cynthia Torres, 49, is a house manager at the Mercy Center for Women who also works in the nonprofit’s food pantry. Torres receives SNAP benefits.
Just after two federal judges ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration must use some emergency funds to cover SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans ahead of a midnight deadline, Gov. Josh Shapiro on Oct. 31 announced he had signed an emergency declaration that will direct $5 million to the state’s 13 food banks to help feed Pennsylvanians affected by the government shutdown.
Shapiro also announced that $1 million in private donations and counting had been raised for the food banks.
“Roughly one in eight of our neighbors here in our Commonwealth rely on SNAP and since SNAP was created back in 1964, it has always been funded 100% by the federal government,” Shapiro said from the Philabundance food bank in Philadelphia, “but right now because of the federal shutdown, two million of our neighbors here in Pennsylvania are about to lose their food assistance for the first time in the history of our nation. They have never had their benefits paused before until right now. This is all because the Trump administration has decided that it will not be issuing SNAP benefits for the month of November.”
The action comes as the federal government is set to run out of funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program amid the government shutdown and just days after Shapiro joined two dozen other states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit claiming Trump’s administration unlawfully froze the program and that he has rejected calls to continue the program using previously approved emergency funds.
Judges on Oct. 31 ordered Trump to tap into the emergency reserve funds to keep SNAP funding flowing.
SNAP supports more than 42 million Americans, including 2 million Pennsylvania residents.