One of the Democrats’ favorite talking points during the Schumer Shutdown has been the claim that the USDA supposedly has some secret stash of “contingency funding” for SNAP that it could tap before benefits expire on November 1st.
They’ve been parroting it for weeks — anything to distract from the fact that their own votes are the reason those benefits are running out in the first place.
Dime Store Obama, a.k.a. Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), for example, said Wednesday that “The administration has the funding to make sure that not a single American on November 1st or beyond goes hungry. Not a single American.”
“They have the money, but they are choosing to withhold funding for SNAP because they want to punish hungry children, hungry veterans, hungry seniors, hungry women, and hungry families as part of their continued effort to hurt everyday Americans,” he claimed.
At a House GOP press conference on Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins dismantled Hakeem Jeffries’ talking points about alleged “contingency funding” for SNAP, calling the claim an outright lie.
The event also highlighted ongoing Republican efforts to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse within the SNAP program — reforms that Democrats in both chambers have repeatedly opposed. In her opening remarks, Rollins hit the nail on the head, noting that the fight has exposed the Democrats’ hypocrisy. The so-called “party of the people,” she said, has reduced its supposed compassion for the poor to nothing more than “cynical control over people’s lives.”
Boom:
?Sec. Rollins STEAMROLLS Democrat Talking Points:
"Democrats’ support for programs like SNAP is now reduced to cynical control over people’s lives. This last month has shown that the party who constantly says it puts people over politics, does the complete opposite." pic.twitter.com/cymaKesCR6
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 31, 2025
Regarding the alleged USDA funding for SNAP, Rollins corrected and clarified the record on that as well:
“The fact that the Democrats are saying, ‘But wait, USDA has money in their accounts’ … is a lie,” Rollins said during a House Republican news conference.
Rollins said the USDA notified state administrators of the federal program twice in October that SNAP benefits would end Nov. 1. …
Rollins pushed back on that idea Friday, saying the contingency fund wouldn’t be sufficient to cover the $9.2 billion that is needed to pay SNAP benefits in November and that the contingency monies are only allowed to be used if the underlying appropriation is funded.
The appropriations bills to fund the government are currently in limbo because Republicans’ stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through Nov. 21 –– and allow for those appropriations to be negotiated –– has not passed [the Senate].
“There is a contingency fund at USDA… but it is only allowed to flow if the underlying program is funded,” Rollins noted further:
?WATCH: Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins explains why the Trump administration cannot keep SNAP benefits going if the government remains shut down. pic.twitter.com/CnLKeh1Non
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) October 31, 2025
In plain English: it’s the Democrats’ refusal to reopen the government and pass the clean continuing resolution — which the House approved back on September 19th — that’s keeping the USDA from releasing any so-called contingency funds.
And let’s be clear, it’s not the USDA’s job to paper over Congress’s failures. Funding programs like SNAP is the responsibility of lawmakers, not bureaucrats. But Democrats have completely abdicated that duty, choosing instead to hold the government — and millions of struggling families — hostage to their political wish list.
They’ve now voted fourteen times in the Senate to keep the government closed, all to protect funding for healthcare for illegal immigrants and to extend Biden’s bloated Obamacare subsidies.
