US to pay reduced food aid benefits, but warns of weeks or months delay

By Nate Raymond and Leah Douglas

(Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration said on Monday it plans to partially fund November food benefits for millions of Americans, but warned it could take some states weeks or months to calculate and distribute the aid.

The administration laid out the Department of Agriculture's plan in a filing in federal court in Rhode Island after a judge ordered it on Friday to use emergency funds to at least partially cover November's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP benefits.

But a USDA official warned in the filing that at least some states, which administer SNAP benefits, would need weeks to months to make system changes that would allow them to calculate and issue the reduced benefits.

Partial payments are unprecedented in the program's 60-year history, which provides assistance to nearly 42 million low-income Americans.

Changes in the system that states need to implement to provide reduced benefits "will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months," said the filing from Patrick Penn, deputy under secretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services at the USDA.

SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, lapsed for the first time ever on November 1 during the federal shutdown.

CONTINGENCY FUNDS

A coalition of Democratic-led states sued the administration last week to draw on contingency funds and other sources of funds to pay for the benefits after the USDA said last month it would suspend SNAP benefits starting November 1.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Monday that the USDA is complying with U.S. District Judge John McConnell's order and "will fulfill its obligation to expend the full amount of SNAP contingency funds today."

While the administration said it would fully deplete the $5.25 billion in contingency funds, it would not use other funding that would allow it to fully fund SNAP benefits, which cost $8 billion to $9 billion per month.

Skye Perryman, CEO and president of Democracy Forward, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement the group is "considering all legal options to secure payment of full funds."

Senator Amy Klobuchar, top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, also said full benefits should be paid. "It is not enough to do the bare minimum — the administration should stop playing politics with hunger and use all available resources to ensure Americans can put food on the table," Klobuchar said in a statement.

The administration said $600 million would be used to fund states' administrative costs in administering SNAP benefits, leaving $4.65 billion to cover 50% of eligible households' current allotments.

UNPRECEDENTED PAYMENTS

States will need to calculate the partial benefit amount for recipients and then transmit that information to their contracted Electronic Benefit Transfer processor, which then loads SNAP recipients' EBT cards with their benefits.

Conduent, an EBT processor that works with 37 states, said it would be able to move quickly once it receives updated benefit information from states.

SNAP benefits are paid out monthly to eligible Americans whose income is less than 130% of the federal poverty line, or $1,632 a month for a one-person household and $2,215 for a two-person household in many areas.

McConnell and another judge in Boston, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, said on Friday the administration had the discretion to also tap a separate fund holding around $23 billion.

Penn said in the court filing the agency is carefully considering using those funds but determined they must remain available for child nutrition programs instead of SNAP.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Leah Douglas in Washington; Editing by Richard Chang and Noeleen Walder and David Gregorio)