Trump Administration Tells Court It Has Money It Can’t Spend to Prevent Food Stamp Cuts

The Trump administration staunchly defended its decision to stop paying food stamps during the government shutdown, insisting that a range of legal, technical and budgetary constraints would prevent it from providing a tranche of available funds to millions of poor Americans in November.

In a new set of court filings, submitted late Wednesday, administration officials acknowledged that they had billions of dollars left over across multiple federal accounts. The amounts appeared to total more than would be needed to cover the full costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for the next month.

But lawyers for the Justice Department signaled that the administration could not, or would not, use those funds, leaving 42 million food stamp recipients at risk of cuts to their benefits beginning on Nov. 1.

The Trump administration repeatedly argued that there were legal obstacles to transferring existing funds to SNAP, technical hurdles in remitting payments quickly and other budgetary constraints to consider at the Agriculture Department, where the money would originate.

The arguments set the stage for what is likely to be a tense, high-stakes hearing on Thursday morning in Massachusetts, where more than two dozen states have asked a judge to force the Trump administration to reprogram the budget and provision full aid for food stamps before Nov. 1.

In its filings, the Trump administration acknowledged that an interruption to food stamps would create a “difficult situation for millions of Americans,” but it insisted the court did not have the ability to prevent it.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The administration’s refusal to act underscored its broader strategy over the course of a fiscal stalemate that is now in its fifth week. Throughout, President Trump has been willing to reprogram the federal budget, but only selectively, safeguarding programs at the heart of his political agenda while leaving some Americans to face the risk of real harm from the shutdown.

For the roughly one in eight Americans who participate in the food stamp program, the immediate threat is hunger and financial hardship, with SNAP benefits set to disappear starting on Nov. 1. The benefits average around $187 a month, costing the federal government about $8 billion monthly, which lawmakers replenish every year as part of the budget process.

SNAP also maintains a reserve in case of emergencies or shortfalls, and many Democrats and Republicans had encouraged the Trump administration to tap that fund — totaling about $5 billion — in the event the shutdown entered November. Initially, the Agriculture Department signaled in its own public guidance that it would indeed use this contingency money to prevent an interruption to food stamp benefits.

But the Trump administration abruptly reversed course this month, saying that it could not legally drain the available reserves, except in cases of natural disasters. The decision caused broad panic and outcry, and prompted 25 states and the District of Columbia to sue, arguing that the federal government had a legal and moral obligation to provision food aid.

Late Wednesday, the Trump administration reaffirmed its opposition.

Officials told the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts that the law did not allow them to transfer or spend money that Congress had not appropriated, or in ways that lawmakers did not intend. That, they said, precluded many of the avenues that states have suggested for funding SNAP during the shutdown.

The administration added that it would be “operationally fraught” if the court sided with states, and forced the government to preserve SNAP benefits using emergency reserves. Officials said that it could take weeks, in some cases, to provision food stamps this way — and that doing so may leave beneficiaries with only less than half the amount they would normally receive in a month under SNAP.

“Such a partial payment has never been made — and for good reason,” the government said in its filing.

The Trump administration also argued against using a second tranche of funds — roughly $16.8 billion in leftover money for nutrition programs, financed partly by customs collections — to sustain SNAP in November. That same pot of funds had allowed the White House only weeks earlier to prevent an interruption to another low-income federal food assistance program, known as WIC, during the shutdown.

Officials acknowledged this week that there were “several differences” that precluded them from taking the same approach with SNAP. At one point, they argued that it would cut into funds that should be available for child nutrition, forcing Congress to replenish the program later.

“In short, there was no option to simply fund the SNAP program fully without an appropriation,” the government said, adding that the states’ request “portended its own costs and damaging consequences.”

The government’s assertions offered a stark contrast with Mr. Trump’s other actions during the shutdown, which has seen the administration move around billions of dollars to continue paying troops and law enforcement agents, including those assisting the administration’s mass deportations.

Unlike those functions of government, however, SNAP is a program that Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have long sought to cut. They sharply restricted the program as part of their recent package of tax cuts, arguing that it was plagued by waste, fraud and abuse.