by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The federal government said Friday that it will comply with a judge’s order to issue full benefits for this month to its food assistance program for low-income households.
In a letter to state directors of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Patrick A. Penn, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official who oversees the program, said the agency “will complete the processes necessary” to make funds available and comply with an order Thursday in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island.
Previously, the administration of President Donald Trump had said it only had enough funding during the government shutdown to cover about half of November SNAP benefits and said that is how much it would send to states to distribute among recipients.
Penn, the USDA under secretary for Food Nutrition, and Consumer Services, had said in a court filing Monday that the decision to cut deposits in half would delay distribution “anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”
Reducing the payouts would have forced states to reconfigure their systems that calculate how much each recipient receives, contributing to delays.
Penn’s letter was sent to the Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS), which uses a contractor to distribute SNAP benefits to recipients’ electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards.
“We are working with Conduent, the State’s EBT vendor, to establish a timeline and process for benefit issuances,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement Friday.
Penn sent his letter on the 38th day of a record-breaking government shutdown. His agency’s website bore a prominent message blaming Democrats and accusing the party of compromising SNAP and other programs, including food inspection, for political “leverage” points involving “gender mutilation” and “healthcare for illegals.”
SNAP disbursals to Georgia recipients have already been delayed at least two days. Distributions usually begin on the fifth of each month for a program that feeds 1.4 million Georgia residents, many of them children.
