U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker on Friday said he isn’t sure why President Donald Trump’s administration is fighting in court to prevent food assistance payments from reaching people during the government shutdown.
“ I’m not sure exactly what the intent of that is,” Smucker said, adding: “The best way to get funding operating is for Democrats to join Republicans in opening the government.”
Smucker, a fifth-term Republican whose district covers Lancaster County and a southern portion of York County, has echoed Republicans in blaming the government shutdown on Democrats, who are withholding their votes on a funding bill until Republicans agree to include an extension to health care subsidies.
Smucker was joined by Ohio Republican Jim Jordan on Friday for a tour of Blessings of Hope‘s Ministry Selection Center in Lancaster, an anti-hunger nonprofit that collects and distributes food donations to pantries and churches. The congressmen accepted questions from reporters at the facility.
Pressed on why Trump is resistant to use the $6 billion in SNAP contingency funding to continue payments, Smucker did not answer. Jordan interjected.
“The president said he wants to help,” Jordan said. “He’s eager to do that. They wanna make sure they do it the right way.”
Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, then pointed to Senate Democrats, saying they could have voted to approve a spending bill multiple times since Oct. 1, when the shutdown began.. He said, repeatedly, that Democrats are throwing “a temper tantrum” to get what they want.
Caught in the middle of the parties’ funding fight are about 42 million SNAP recipients nationwide who are uncertain whether they’ll receive their food assistance check for November. Nearly 2 million people across Pennsylvania, one-in-eight residents, benefit from the program.
A federal judge in Rhode Island on Thursday ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fully deliver SNAP payments by the end of the week, but the Trump administration appealed that decision Friday.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, who joined the lawsuit against the USDA, on Friday afternoon announced in Philadelphia that the state Department of Human Services had received the federal SNAP funds and would be distributing the money to SNAP recipients soon.
Shapiro acknowledged the court could continue the pause on SNAP payments, and he criticized Trump for allowing his administration to continue to oppose its funding during the shutdown.
“This is a compact that the federal government had made with people who are going hungry in this country,” Shapiro said. “They broke that compact.”
Earlier this month, Shapiro declared the commonwealth in a state of emergency over the lack of SNAP payments to open $5 million in state funds to benefit food banks to offset the expected rise in demand.
‘Uptick’ in need
David Lapp is a founder and chief executive of Blessings of Hope. He led Smucker and Jordan through the 29,000 square-foot donation center filled with boxes and bags of donated food, which ranged from flour and dried beans to fresh produce and bags of candy.
Lapp told the congressman that he has seen about a 20% “uptick” in the past two weeks from organizations looking to acquire more food from his nonprofit, which charges $0.39 per pound to cover its administrative costs.
He said hunger in the United States is a solvable problem, and organizations like his are stepping in to fill gaps in services that the federal government is failing to provide.
“The USDA website states that 30% to 40% of all food produced in America is wasted, while an estimated 60 million people are considered food insecure in this country,” Lapp said. “So we see the food insecurity issue as a management issue, not a production issue.”