What to know on Day 34 of the government shutdown:
- The Senate will reconvene Monday afternoon and is not currently scheduled to vote on a House-passed measure to fund the government. The government shutdown is on track to become the longest in history on Tuesday, when it would eclipse the 2018-2019 funding lapse.
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture told a federal court that it will tap into a contingency fund to allow states to issue partial November benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program after two federal judges directed it to do so. The government said it would use about $4.6 billion in contingency funds to cover part of the roughly $9 billion needed to make full SNAP payments. Eligible households will receive 50% of their benefits in November, but the USDA warned that some states might experience delays in getting money out the door.
- In an interview on “60 Minutes,” President Trump said his plan to end the shutdown is to “keep voting,” and, “If [Democrats] don’t vote, that’s their problem.” Over the weekend, he continued to urge the Senate to do away with the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation, which would allow Republicans to fund the government without Democratic votes.
Trump administration to use SNAP contingency fund to pay partial food stamp benefits
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told a federal court that it will tap into a contingency fund to allow states to issue partial November benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown.
In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
When will the shutdown become the longest ever?
The partial government shutdown of late 2018 and early 2019 is the longest in U.S. history. It began on Dec. 22, 2018, and ended on Jan. 25, 2019, its 35th day.
The Senate and the House both passed a continuing resolution to resolve that shutdown by unanimous consent shortly after President Trump announced a deal to extend government funding for three weeks.
The House approved the measure after the Senate, agreeing to it at 6:58 p.m. on Day 35, according to congressional records. The White House announced the president had signed the continuing resolution at 9:23 p.m.
Without an unforeseen breakthrough in the Senate, the current shutdown will match the 35-day mark on Tuesday, making it the longest ever by tomorrow evening.
Johnson addresses Trump’s call to end the filibuster
Asked to weigh in on the president’s calls to end the filibuster in recent days, Johnson said he talked to the president multiple times over the weekend and the topic came up. He said Mr. Trump is “very passionate about this,” while attributing the energy around the issue within the GOP to “the real desperation that we feel because we want the government to be open.”
“I understand desperate times call for desperate measures,” Johnson said. “I also understand that traditionally we’ve seen that as an important safeguard, I mean, I obviously shared my thoughts with the president on that.”
The Louisiana Republicans said “as much as I have wanted to blow up the filibuster sometimes as a House member, when we were not getting what we wanted done on our agenda, I hear my Senate Republican colleagues, some of the most conservative people in Congress, who say it’s an important safeguard.”
Democrats have “already told us” what they would do without the filibuster in place, Johnson said, arguing they would pack the Supreme Court, grant statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico, restrict Second Amendment rights and federalize elections.
Johnson said there are “a lot of abuses that could come, and so that’s the caveat, that’s what they’re working through.”
The speaker acknowledged that it’s “not a House issue, it’s a Senate issue, and we’ll see how that’s resolved.”
Johnson defends Trump administration’s SNAP funding stance
At his press conference at the Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the administration’s stance on funding SNAP benefits, arguing there are “legal impediments” to using a contingency fund for the food aid.
The Louisiana Republicans said “the president is desperate for SNAP benefits to flow to the American citizens who desperately rely upon it.” But he said it’s “more complicated” than simply funding the benefits with the contingency funds, which he said are intended for things like hurricanes.
“The way we always understood it was, the contingency fund could not be used legally if the underlying fund were suspended,” Johnson added. “You have two courts, two liberal courts, Obama judges who’ve said, no, that’s not right, get them paid. Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
He said that the $5.2 billion in the contingency fund wouldn’t fully cover the $9 billion needed to pay full benefits for November, requiring the government to calculate partial benefits: “It’s not as easy as hitting, go, send, on a computer. You’ve got to go through and recalculate partial payments to the 42 million recipients on the program.”
The speaker noted that Mr. Trump isn’t appealing the ruling from two federal judges last week, who directed the administration to tap into contingency funds to make the payments. He said Mr. Trump “wants SNAP to be done, but he doesn’t see the mechanism to do it.”
Johnson reiterated that “the easiest way to get full SNAP payments to everybody who’s eligible is for the Democrats to come in here and vote to reopen the government on a clean, non-partisan CR.”
What the Senate is voting on today
The Senate is not currently scheduled to vote on the House-passed measure to reopen the government today.
The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. with a procedural vote on a judicial nomination set for 5:30 p.m., according to Majority Whip John Barrasso’s office.
