Today, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) led the Senate Democratic Caucus in introducing the Keep SNAP and WIC Funded Act of 2025, legislation that prevents the Trump administration from illegally withholding available funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Despite having billions of dollars ready and available to pay for SNAP, the Trump administration continues to withhold available funds and play politics with the ability of Americans across the country to put food on the table. Not only does the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have the authority to release SNAP contingency funds, but the statute is clear: the Trump administration is required by law to release these funds. Video of Senator Schumer’s remarks can be found HERE.
“For the first time in history, a president, Donald Trump, is refusing to fund SNAP during a shutdown. Forty-two million Americans — hungry children, middle-class families, veterans, the unemployed, senior citizens who struggle to pay for their food — all of these people will lose their SNAP benefits, not because the money’s gone, not because it’s not permitted, because Donald Trump callously ordered it stopped,” said Senator Schumer. “Never before, under any president, Democrat or Republican, has SNAP been cut off in a shutdown, and Trump knows he can use available funds but is refusing to do so to play politics.”
The Keep SNAP and WIC Funded Act of 2025 directs the USDA to immediately release billions of dollars in available funds to ensure that the approximately 42 million Americans who receive SNAP and 7 million pregnant women and new moms who receive WIC aid will see their benefits continue uninterrupted until the shutdown ends. The legislation also requires the federal government to reimburse states for covering SNAP benefits during a shutdown. The full bill text of the legislation can be found here.
“If they have billions and billions for Argentina, and all this money for other things, like jets and ballrooms, they have enough money to keep funding SNAP. And they know it,” Schumer added.
President Trump forced the Department of Agriculture to abandon their shutdown contingency plan, making this Saturday the first time in American history SNAP benefits will lapse for hungry children, veterans, seniors, and other Americans.
Earlier this year, Trump already gutted nearly $200 billion from SNAP in the Republican ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ and canceled $1 billion in food assistance for schools and food banks.
Schumer added, “Senate Democrats are introducing legislation to fully fund SNAP and WIC – to protect hungry kids, pregnant women, veterans, and working parents. This bill is simple. It’s moral. It’s urgent…. We are just three days away from open enrollment and three days away from the biggest healthcare crisis America has seen in a generation. Democrats will not stand by while Trump manufactures a hunger crisis. We’re ready to work in whatever way to solve this issue.”
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a lifeline for nearly 3 million NY seniors, veterans and families who rely on the critical funding to purchase groceries. If the USDA does not utilize available funding to continue the program, these New Yorkers are at risk of losing their SNAP benefits. This includes nearly 1 million children and more than 600,000 seniors.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-M.O.) has also introduced a bill that would fully fund SNAP until the shutdown ends. Schumer and other Democrats have co-sponsored that bill, but Republican leadership has refused to bring it to the floor for a vote.
“The Hawley Bill now has eleven Republican co-sponsors and many, many Democrats… Tomorrow, if John Thune would put it on the floor, it would pass overwhelmingly,” Schumer concluded.
