As I was walking through the Streets at Southpoint last week, I overheard a conversation that a young woman was having with someone over the phone.
She told the person, “Yeah I can do that … well, when the government reopens.”
Call me naive, but at the time I didn’t really know what a “government shutdown” actually meant. I thought for the most part, it was about national parks and museums not being open for business.
With that said, I’m pretty bummed that if I wanted to go the Smithsonian over fall break, I wouldn’t be able to because its operations have been affected by the government shutdown.
The shutdown, which went into effect at the end of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, impacts much more than just landmarks. Many governmental food assistance programs are either currently being impacted by the shutdown, or will be in the future if operations do not resume any time soon.
I saw a Facebook status on Monday in which someone I know from back home said he was behind an elderly woman in the grocery store, and her EBT card was not working when she swiped it. The cashier said that the government shutdown had affected the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program.
Although it was later revealed that EBT cards were actually not working in several states because of a server glitch, the possibility that these programs will cease if the government remains closed is a problem.
While eligible households will continue to receive SNAP benefits for October, the program does not have “statutory authority” to continue to distribute benefits after the end of the month. There are contingency funds that do not expire until the end of the 2014 fiscal year if needed. But if the shutdown were to go on for a while, the funds would not last for long.
As far as WIC, the supplemental program for Women, Infants and Children, it has enough benefits for the time being, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture has no authority to continue the program during a shutdown.
This leaves the program up to the states to fund, and that has already been the subject of problems as some states have closed their WIC offices and withheld vouchers.
