By Lily Dennis
(Courtesy of Wikipedia)
On Oct 1, the federal government announced a total government shutdown. This caused federal funding for different aid programs, as well as federal salaries, to grind to a halt for a record-breaking 43 days. According to a recent article from the BBC, Throughout this time period, an estimated 1.4 million federal employees failed to receive paychecks. As a direct result of this, thousands of flights in various airports across the nation were either delayed or cancelled entirely, with security lines in many airports reported to have wait times lasting hours, lines stretching completely out of the airport doors in some instances.
In addition to this, on Nov 1, the government shutdown had also caused a suspension of federal funding for SNAP, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This program is set up to provide assistance to low-income Americans with affording food, ensuring that those who aren’t able to secure food stability on their own are granted an opportunity to do so with federal support. The United States Department of Agriculture website has an entire page devoted to SNAP, stating how “SNAP provides food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being.”
This program is a large government service in this country. A recent report from NPR found that around 1 in 8 Americans rely on some form of SNAP benefit every month to go towards strengthening their food stability. The USDA, or the United States Department of Agriculture, reported that SNAP benefits are received monthly by around 41.7 million people. That is 41.7 million people throughout the nation that depend on SNAP benefits to be able to put food on their table every month. Following the government shutdown, this same SNAP funding was paused altogether during the month of November for nearly two weeks, causing questions of food insecurity for millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Colorado residents.
Although the government shutdown has been lifted as of Nov 12th, there were still large delays in SNAP distributions. This only increased already-existing uncertainties surrounding food stability for many families across the nation. In response to the initial government shutdown, the task of bridging the gaps that the SNAP absence left to provide for food stability were largely dealt with on a state-by-state basis.
In Colorado, the state’s Department of Human Services urged those in need to reach out to local food banks for assistance, providing hotlines and resources for finding help on the official website. Among these include search engines for local and accessible food banks and assistance programs. In and around Boulder specifically, the city has also released on their website information for finding and accessing resources to help with food insecurity in and around the city, providing links and other contact information. Of these include the Emergency Family Assistance Association, Harvest of Hope Food Pantry, and Community Food Share.