Krisi Post plucked a single raspberry from a plastic clamshell outside the Salvation Army. Though she was very hungry, she told herself to eat just the one — she has a sugar allergy and can’t handle a lot of fruit at one time. She had other food she was wary of: she hoped the broccoli in the food bank box she was there to collect wouldn’t trigger her condition, but she wasn’t sure.
She would have preferred to have bought oats at the WinCo grocery store she’d visited a few hours earlier in the day. In fact, she’d tried. But when she’d gone to pay, she’d discovered the card the federal government normally replenishes twice a month through a poverty food provision program known as the Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), was empty. Now, her only option was to wait in line for whatever food would be disbursed from under a tent in the parking lot of the Salvation Army on Indiana Avenue — even if it would be food that had the potential to give her hives and trouble breathing.
Post was one of about a dozen people lined up at the Salvation Army’s food bank on Tuesday. SNAP benefits have been swept into a stalemate between congressional Republicans and Democrats who won’t pass the normal legislation that keeps the government, including food assistance programs, funded. About 43 million Americans are affected.
Post gestured to a bag of food she’d been given.
“I love broccoli, but it does have a bit of sugar,” she said. “The spaghetti squash is still high in sugar, starchy, and so I probably, actually, won’t be able to eat that. But the onions I can. I know what I’m gonna do with the onions and broccoli.”
Food security is at least temporarily collateral damage in the impasse as SNAP, also known as food stamps, is cut. The Trump administration could extend payments from an emergency food aid program, as it was ordered by two federal judges; instead, the administration announced November 4 it would not disburse the funds, contradicting a previous court filing it made. Now, state officials in Washington are announcing that the federal government is paying out some SNAP benefits, but only at about 50% what people normally receive.
Locally, food aid organizations are seeing “COVID-level” stresses on their services, RANGE reported this week.
People like Post are caught in the lurch. She found it infuriating and inexplicable that some of the funds weren’t being used for the most vulnerable of SNAP recipients.
“ I was shocked that they didn’t put them through for the most sensitive parts of the population,” she said, “like people that are living so far beneath the the poverty line that they’re in the streets.”
US Republican Representative Michael Baumgartner, who represents Eastern Washington, addressed the crisis in his weekly newsletter in which he blamed Senate Democrats for the stalemate and promoted his staff’s recent volunteering effort at 2nd Harvest Food Bank. He did not return a call for comment on this story. In his newsletter, he noted 2nd Harvest had seen an uptick of 50% in demand for food aid since SNAP benefits were cut.
He linked to a tweet in the newsletter, which said: “We need the government open. While that fight continues in DC, I know that the good people of Eastern Washington will step forward to help out here at home. Please do what you can.”
At the Salvation Army, Chris Connor had to ask for a ride from a friend to the food bank because he doesn’t have a car. He said the SNAP benefits he lost had been a lifeline.
“I’m on Social Security so I do get some money,” Connor said, “but bills and stuff take a lot of it, and food stamps have been the only way that I’ve been able to actually eat healthy.”
As a result, the Salvation Army and other organizations that maintain community food pantries have seen double the normal traffic of people needing food.
Sandy Riddle, a life-long Spokanite who is disabled and lives with her two sons, relies on government assistance to make ends meet. One of her sons, who is working age, is injured and can’t work. Riddle is especially worried because during past shutdowns, state governments have tried to fill the gap, but that hasn’t happened yet this time. On November 5, this shutdown became the longest in American history, at 36 days.
“We don’t have the extra money to be able to put food on the table,” Riddle said.
One woman in line who refused to give her name because she thought she would be attacked for being conservative, said she hopes Republicans in the US Congress would continue the shutdown until Democrats “cave” and agree to rescind health care subsidies, the conflict at the center of the shutdown.
She stopped just short of cheering the Republicans’ refusal to give in to Democrats’ demands on the health insurance benefits, saying she was willing to wait out the crisis before her SNAP benefits were restored if it meant slashing the federal budget.
“I was kind of hoping it would happen because like I’m tired of our side always caving to Democrats and giving them everything that they want,” she said. “It’s time that we start being smarter with our money and not giving trillions of dollars to this program and that program and focus on our country.”
As she stood in the parking lot, Post, who told RANGE she was “between homes,” shivered despite her jacket and hood. As the food bank line advanced, her feet — clad only in a pair of white flip flops — were turning bright red from being out in the cold.
