(NEXSTAR) – The Trump administration announced Monday that food assistance would be partially funded in November following two judges’ rulings to keep the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) running. But despite Monday’s announcement, benefits could still be delayed weeks or even months.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP, plans to use a $4.65-billion emergency fund to get November benefits up and running again. However, the emergency fund isn’t enough to cover SNAP benefits in full, which cost about $8 billion monthly. The USDA said in court on Monday it only has enough money to provide beneficiaries’ with half of their normal monthly allotment.
That leaves SNAP recipients – about 1 in 8 Americans – still uncertain of what will happen once the fund runs dry after November.
It also leaves a lot of questions for the near-term. The USDA didn’t release the funds before the Nov. 1 deadline, leaving benefits for millions of people delayed already.
While SNAP is federally funded, it’s administered by state agencies. Those agencies were still waiting on instructions Monday afternoon on how to move forward in calculating the partial per-household benefit.
It also takes time to reload the debit cards SNAP recipients use to buy groceries. The process takes up to two weeks in some states. But the USDA warned in a court filing that it could take weeks or even months for states to make all the system changes to send out reduced benefits.
It’s also not clear exactly how much beneficiaries will receive once the money does come through. Every state is handling things differently, and some have decided to tap into their own emergency funds to reload EBT cards.
New Mexico and Rhode Island officials said Monday that some SNAP beneficiaries received funds over the weekend from their emergency programs. Officials in Delaware are telling recipients that their benefits won’t be available until at least Nov. 7.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a news conference that it would take his state about a week to load benefit cards once the funding is made available.
“These are folks who are hungry, and every day matters,” Bonta said.
Prior to the court rulings, which came down on Friday, the agency had said it would not be using the contingency fund, and that no new benefits would be issued after Nov. 1 as the government shutdown dragged on.
On Monday afternoon the USDA’s website still had a message blaming Democrats for the shutdown and subsequent lapse in SNAP funding.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.