WASHINGTON ― The Donald Trump administration insists food benefits can’t go out next month because of a government shutdown initiated by Democrats. But the last time Trump was in charge during a shutdown, his administration made sure people wouldn’t miss their benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which supports more than 40 million Americans in low-income households. In 2019, after the government shut down because Congress refused to fund a border wall, the Department of Agriculture took unprecedented steps to save the food benefits ― steps a government watchdog later said were actually illegal. That shutdown started in December 2018, presenting no problem for January’s SNAP benefits. But as the funding impasse approached a second month and there was uncertainty about whether the benefits could be distributed in February, the Trump administration told states to send out February’s benefits several weeks in advance. “We want to ensure states and SNAP recipients that the benefits for February will be provided,” Sonny Perdue, then the secretary of agriculture, told reporters at the time. It’s a stunning contrast with today’s USDA, which has plastered its website with a message warning “the well has run dry” and that there’s no money for November’s benefits. “The Trump administration has pulled a complete 180,” David Super, an administrative procedure expert at Georgetown University Law School, told HuffPost. “In 2019, they bent the law to ensure that no families in need would lose benefits,” Super said. “Now, with continuing SNAP not only legal but mandatory, they are doing everything they can to prevent families from getting benefits.”The other shutdown ended in January 2019, so the early payment wound up being unnecessary. In the fall of 2019, the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency that reviews federal spending, declared the USDA had no legal basis to “alter its pattern of obligations” with the early SNAP payments. The GAO also noted the USDA “may have had some or all of a $3 billion contingency fund available to pay for SNAP benefits.”Democrats in Congress today have blasted the Trump administration for its decision not to pay next month’s SNAP benefits, pointing to the presence of somewhere around $6 billion in that same contingency fund ― enough to cover most of one month of SNAP benefits. (The USDA itself suggested it could tap the contingency fund to pay benefits in a shutdown plan it has since deleted from its website.) “Republicans are now threatening to weaponize hunger against the American people and withhold funding for nutritional assistance for children and seniors and veterans and women,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday. The shutdown started earlier this month after Senate Democrats demanded a government funding bill include an extension of expiring health insurance subsidies. The Trump administration has found ways to fund salaries for members of the military and certain federal workers, but has said it can’t do the SNAP benefits ― and Democrats are to blame. “If Democrats continue to hold Americans hostage, there will not be enough funds to provide SNAP benefits for more than 40 million Americans on Nov. 1,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. “Democrats are solely responsible for all of this unnecessary pain.” Spokespeople for the USDA and the White House did not immediately respond Wednesday to requests for comment.Close