As of this writing, there have been ten votes to reopen the government since October 1. The 53 Republican senators need at least seven Democrats and Independents to break with Chuck Schumer to reach the 60-vote threshold to break the Democrats’ filibuster, and while a few have put their constituents above partisan politics, Vermont’s two senators, Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, have not. On all ten votes to end the shutdown, they voted NO.
The consequences of this “partisan politics over people” obstinacy could be devastating for Vermont’s most vulnerable citizens. A meeting of the Joint Fiscal Committee on October 16 underscored how serious the situation is, especially regarding low-income food and heating assistance programs, SNAP, and LIHEAP.
Vermont winter is approaching fast, and it is already starting to get cold. As I started writing this article, the radio news reported temperatures were below freezing in St. Albans. 15,000 households, over 30,000 people, depend on LIHEAP (Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program) to keep warm. The program costs about $20 million for the whole winter, but needs around $13 million to implement the first round of deliveries – soon. Josh Davis, executive director of SEVCA, testified:
Our goal of getting people to stretch from now to when the seasonal fuel assists come only work if that assist comes. So, if that is delayed, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll have many that will literally freeze. We don’t have contingency or backup funds that we can rely on…. We’ve been told that there are contingencies for a while and that there was a plan with the government shutdown, but as of right now we haven’t seen details of that plan and the timing is mismatched with what has to happen. Vermonters are turning on their heating systems now.
Asked if the continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government, passed by the Republican majority in the House and supported by the Republicans in the Senate, provided funding for LIHEAP, Matt Cota of Meadow Hill Consulting, testified, “It’s my understanding that both the House and Senate versions of the CR… had funding for the LIHEP program.”
So, if Sanders and Welch continue to block a re-opening of the government through the end of the month, refusing to pass the CR, Vermonters will, to quote Davis again, “literally freeze.”
A larger and even more logistically problematic issue is the impact on the SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] benefits. This program helps with the grocery bills of 31,000 households, more than 63,000 low-income Vermonters. It costs between $12 and $13 million per month to operate. It is a federal program administered by the state.
Jenney Samuelson, Secretary of the Agency of Human Services, explained,
If the lapse in the appropriation [aka the government shutdown] continues there will be insufficient funds to pay for the SNAP benefits… essentially saying that SNAP benefits will end or will not continue in November. [Emphasis added]
That’s less than two weeks away. And unlike LIHEAP, where there are some potential options for the state to backfill the locked-up funds and deliver benefits on time, there are no such options for SNAP. The reason for this is that the EBT cards beneficiaries use to access their benefits are controlled at the federal level, and the folks who do that work are, well, shut down. As such, as Samuelson stated, “It could mean that the EBT cards issued are no longer functional beginning on November 1st.”
So, even if the state were able to find the money in Vermont to fund the program temporarily, the mechanism for people to use that money still wouldn’t work. In human terms, a person on November 1 could go to the grocery store, fill their cart, and find out at the check-out counter that they can’t pay for the food. And there doesn’t appear to be any workaround for this. Samuelson again:
We have been exploring what it would look like to potentially backfill the program with state funds in the interim basis, but… it looks like the federal contingency plan may make that impossible at this time. We’ve been in lots of communication with other states, and most other states have come to the same conclusion and are not going to be able to backfill it with state funds.
While I personally have issues with how the SNAP program is administered and believe it is in dire need of reform, cutting everyone off the program without warning is beyond callous and totally irresponsible governance.
Sanders and Welch need to stop playing to their radical “resistance” at all costs base – most of whom I suspect face no threat of winding up cold and hungry as a result of this political game – and consider the lives and well-being of their most vulnerable, and perhaps less politically active, constituents.
