(SRN NEWS/AP/97.5 GLORY FM) – With word coming down from Washington Monday that the Trump administration will partially fund SNAP for November, we wanted to know how many people in Hall and surrounding counties use the program. And we found a map that shows that for every county in the country. Where US households will be most affected from a pause in SNAP benefits
We learned that nationwide approximately 12% of U.S. households use federal food assistance programs like SNAP. In Hall County, it’s 9%.
So, what about the other counties?
Here’s what we found: Gwinnett 7.4%, Forsyth 2.4, Dawson 7.7, Lumpkin 9.0, White 9.5, Habersham 12.1, Banks 13.8, Jakson 8.9, and Barrow 10.1%.
That comes to an average of 8.99% for the region.
Gov. Kemp, meanwhile, has rejected requests to help, saying he would be setting a bad precedent in doing so, and, like many Republican leaders, placing the blame on Democrats for allowing the government shutdown, which has caused the problem, to continue.
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President Donald Trump’s administration had said Monday that it will partially fund SNAP for November, after two judges issued rulings requiring the government to keep the nation’s largest food aid program running.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), had planned to freeze payments starting Nov. 1 because it said it could no longer keep funding it during the federal government shutdown. The program serves about 1 in 8 Americans and is a major piece of the nation’s social safety net. It costs more than $8 billion per month nationally. The government says an emergency fund it will use has $4.65 billion — enough to cover about half the normal benefits.
Exhausting the fund potentially sets the stage for a similar situation in December if the shutdown isn’t resolved by then.
It’s not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive, nor how quickly they will see value show up on the debit cards they use to buy groceries. November payments have already been delayed for millions of people.
“The Trump Administration has the means to fund this program in full, and their decision not to will leave millions of Americans hungry and waiting even longer for relief as government takes the additional steps needed to partially fund this program,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, who led a coalition of Democratic state officials in one of the lawsuits that forced the funding, said in a statement.
The administration also provided an infusion to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which helps low-income mothers buy nutritious staples. WIC received an additional $450 million in funding, according to a senior administration official who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly. POLITICO first reported on the funding Monday afternoon.