SNAP benefits to end due to US govt shutdown

[squatting dog]

Did they get "clarification" before sending $40 billion to Argentina? It seems there was no red tape involving that at all. Will there be "consequences down the road" for that expenditure? Where did that money come from anyway.

Did some digging and here's what I found.
First... This isn't direct cash but a swap line (repayable) plus leveraged private funds, bypassing full congressional approval via the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF)

$20 billion direct U.S. support: This is a currency swap line from the (ESF), allowing Argentina to exchange pesos for U.S. dollars
to defend its currency. It's essentially a short-term loan, with Argentina expected to repay in pesos (which the U.S. can convert back to dollars).

Additional $20 billion: Facilitated by the U.S. Treasury through private banks (e.g., JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs) and sovereign wealth funds. This is not direct U.S. taxpayer money but leverages U.S. guarantees or influence to attract private lenders.
Banks have expressed interest but are seeking collateral from Argentina to mitigate risks.

 

[againstthegrain]

The Supremes punt.

"Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday temporarily halted a court order that would have required the Trump administration to fund food stamps in full, in a move that fueled new uncertainty around the immediate fate of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

The justice did not rule on the legality of the White House’s actions. Instead, she imposed a pause meant to give an appeals court more time to weigh the legal arguments raised by the government, as it seeks to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown.

The order, known as an administrative stay, came as a growing number of states, including New York, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Oregon, said that they had released full benefits to their residents anyway, as they scrambled to restart the nation’s largest anti-hunger program after weeks of delays. It remained unclear late Friday how the temporary hold imposed by the justice might now affect some of those benefit payments.

The legal wrangling concerns the program known as SNAP, which helps roughly one in eight Americans purchase groceries. For weeks, the Trump administration has repeatedly refused to tap an ample reserve of federal funds that would sustain SNAP benefits into November, while the federal government remains closed."

 

[Trade]

Beans, rice, and squirrel.

Actually, I haven’t done the math but the main staples in my daily diet, while working on better nutrition are canned pumpkin, steel-cut oats, unsweetened applesauce, avocado oil, rye flour, walnuts, almonds, chia seeds, flaxseed, plain Greek yogurt, dill pickles, and protein powder.

Once I reach goal weight I'll dust off the bags of brown rice and black beans in the pantry.

I sometimes like to play this little game where I take some item of food that you can buy at the grocery store and calculate how much it would cost to eat that exclusively. Take spaghetti for starters. I can buy a one pound box of spaghetti for $1.54 and it will provide 1440 calories. So I can eat 2500 calories of spaghetti for $2.67. So if I could live on spaghetti alone I could get by on $80 a month for groceries. Now if you want sauce with your spaghetti that's gonna run you a bit more but it will still come out pretty cheap.

Butter running about $4 bucks a pound and that will get you a whopping 3200 calories so you can eat nothing but butter and get by for under $100 bucks a month. But you do some variety so if you want to save on groceries just eat spaghetti with butter on it. It's really tasty and cheap! Of course there are some health considerations with that and you will probaly gain weight but it will save you money!

On the other hand a pound of New York Strip steak costs $21 a pound and provides about 1200 calories. So 2500 calories will cost you $43.75 which would work out to $1,312.50 for a month. So New York Strip steak costs a little over 16 times as much to eat per calorie than spaghetti. But you'll probably lose weight because that will put you into ketosis in a big way.

 

[Lawrence00]

I sometimes like to play this little game where I take some item of food that you can buy at the grocery store and calculate how much it would cost to eat that exclusively. Take spaghetti for starters. I can buy a one pound box of spaghetti for $1.54 and it will provide 1440 calories. So I can eat 2500 calories of spaghetti for $2.67. So if I could live on spaghetti alone I could get by on $80 a month for groceries. Now if you want sauce with your spaghetti that's gonna run you a bit more but it will still come out pretty cheap.

Butter running about $4 bucks a pound and that will get you a whopping 3200 calories so you can eat nothing but butter and get by for under $100 bucks a month. But you do some variety so if you want to save on groceries just eat spaghetti with butter on it. It's really tasty and cheap! Of course there are some health considerations with that and you will probaly gain weight but it will save you money!

On the other hand a pound of New York Strip steak costs $21 a pound and provides about 1200 calories. So 2500 calories will cost you $43.75 which would work out to $1,312.50 for a month. So New York Strip steak costs a little over 16 times as much to eat per calorie than spaghetti. But you'll probably lose weight because that will put you into ketosis in a big way.

 

[Murrmurr]

Did they get "clarification" before sending $40 billion to Argentina? It seems there was no red tape involving that at all. Will there be "consequences down the road" for that expenditure? Where did that money come from anyway.

Hello, Miss Diva.

For protection, SNAP funds come from one account and their allocation is very specific, which is why congress required a judicial order, basically permission from a court, to temporarily draw funds from another source. Military funds come from a number of accounts, and congress can approve their reallocation as needed.

The boy who comes here to do chores for me once a week said his mom got her SNAP benefits today. In Calif, EBT cards get the SNAP reload on various days depending on the last 2 digits of their case number. So, his mom's number probably ends with 07.

 

[Murrmurr]

I see that today, a judge ordered the Admin. to divert some $5 billion from the school lunch program to SNAP by the end of today. I wonder about the legal aspect as this money was allocated by congress. Wonder if they can just shift it to another program without congress aproving it.

They needed a court order to use those other funds. Fortunately, it is a temporary order. I don't know if the court order says congress has to pay the lunch program back....I hope so. I'm concerned about this setting a precedent.

 

[gruntlabor]

View attachment 464354

Yes! Or the above may be improved still more by
1. replacing the tuna with Going Fishing, and
2. replacing the canned beans with a 25# sack of dry beans, and
3. home-picked herbal teas and berries

 

[Trade]

Yes! Or the above may be improved still more by
1. replacing the tuna with Going Fishing, and

Lol! The average sport fisherman probably spends at least $100 for every pound of fish they catch. Some spend a lot more. Like my oldest son with his $36,000 Bass boat and thousands and thousands of dollars worth of rods, reels and artificial lures.

 

[Trade]

View attachment 464354

$24.60 for canned tuna per month? Lol! The canned Tuna I buy, Starkist in extra virgin olive oil with roasted garlic runs $1.98 per 4.5 ounce can at Walmart and has 270 calories. With the 10% tax that I have to pay on groceries in this supposedly conservative low tax state that I live in that comes to $2.18 a can. So for $24.60 I can get 11.28 cans. That will give me 3,045 calories. Enough for about a day and a half. Or spread over a month that's about 100 calories a day. So show me how you can get another 1900 calories a day for a month for about $10 bucks worth of brown rice (which tastes awful by the way) and $5.76 worth of canned beans.

Better yet go back to the drawing board and show me how much a month you need to meet to meet a 2,000 calorie a day diet for a month. Show all your work. I wanna see actual numbers and calculations. As it stands now if I'm a high school home economics teacher I'd give you an "F" on what you have submitted so far.

 

[Irishdude]

The big fraud, waste and abuse comes from huge sweetheart contracts handed out by politicians to their donors and compadres. Private prisons and military contractors like Blackwater are perfect examples.

Washington politicians who are poor are scarcer than hen's teeth. Gee, I wonder how that happens.

Total federal government spending on private prisons is about $4 billion, out of a total federal budget of about $7.1 trillion. That's not even a rounding error.

There are some serious ethical problems with private prison contracts, as the contractors are incentivized to cut corners. But that's a separate issue.

Meanwhile fraud, waste and abuse related to healthcare is estimated at over $100 billion.

 

[Trade]

Meanwhile fraud, waste and abuse related to healthcare is estimated at over $100 billion.

Most of that is by doctors and other health care professioals that charge Medicare and other insurances for proceedures and tests that aren't necessary or that they don't even do. And he doesn't even eat what he catches. He throws them back so he can catch them again next weekend. Lol!

 

[StarSong]

Total federal government spending on private prisons is about $4 billion, out of a total federal budget of about $7.1 trillion. That's not even a rounding error.

There are some serious ethical problems with private prison contracts, as the contractors are incentivized to cut corners. But that's a separate issue.

Meanwhile fraud, waste and abuse related to healthcare is estimated at over $100 billion.

I was merely citing some obvious examples of sweetheart contracts. There are thousands of them, if not tens of thousands. And as happens in the Mafia, prices are inflated because numerous parties get their "taste."

$4 billion isn't chicken feed. As Senator Everett Dirkson reputedly said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

p.s. Wasn't Elon was going to root out all that waste?

 

[StarSong]

Yes! Or the above may be improved still more by
1. replacing the tuna with Going Fishing, and
2. replacing the canned beans with a 25# sack of dry beans, and
3. home-picked herbal teas and berries

I agree there are ways to eat well on a very skimpy budget, even in a city like Los Angeles (no fishing, hunting or berry picking).

I've been there, done that - when our kids were hungry teens - and know the drill. Whether others are willing to do the work involved and give up the alluring taste of (crap) convenience foods is another matter.

 

[squatting dog]

I was merely citing some obvious examples of sweetheart contracts. There are thousands of them, if not tens of thousands. And as happens in the Mafia, prices are inflated because numerous parties get their "taste."

$4 billion isn't chicken feed. As Senator Everett Dirkson reputedly said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

p.s. Wasn't Elon was going to root out all that waste?

It's a big govt and there's plenty of fraud and abuse to go around.
To answer your question... As of November 2025, DOGE remains operational and continues targeting government waste, fraud, and inefficiencies. Recent actions include audits, contract terminations, and fraud investigations across agencies.

It's a tough task to root out all the abuse. For instance, DOGE requested recipient data (e.g., citizenship status, SSNs) from all 50 states via USDA letters in May 2025. Only 29 states have cooperated fully.
Quite an eye opener when you concider DOGE's audits, coordinated with USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, estimate $100 billion in potential SNAP fraud since 2021—far exceeding prior baselines. This includes overpayments to ineligible recipients and trafficking (selling benefits for cash).

 

[Irishdude]

I was merely citing some obvious examples of sweetheart contracts. There are thousands of them, if not tens of thousands. And as happens in the Mafia, prices are inflated because numerous parties get their "taste."

$4 billion isn't chicken feed. As Senator Everett Dirkson reputedly said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

p.s. Wasn't Elon was going to root out all that waste?

I agree there is waste everywhere. What makes the most sense to me is to go after the largest targets first.

I don't care about Orange guy, Elon or anybody else. This is a completely bipartisan problem. We have $7 trillion in expenses and $5 trillion in revenues. We stay on this course and we end in disaster. In fact with a $37 trillion total debt it's probably too late to turn things around. We already pay more in interest on the debt than we do for defense.

 

[Fritz]

I lived on ramen noodles and PBJ sandwiches for a while when I was first on my own. It was all I could afford.

 

[StarSong]

I agree there is waste everywhere. What makes the most sense to me is to go after the largest targets first.

I don't care about Orange guy, Elon or anybody else. This is a completely bipartisan problem. We have $7 trillion in expenses and $5 trillion in revenues. We stay on this course and we end in disaster. In fact with a $37 trillion total debt it's probably too late to turn things around. We already pay more in interest on the debt than we do for defense.

My point about Elon was that initially there was great braggadocio about DOGE saving $2 trillion. Then the number was reduced to $1 trillion. They claim to have saved $180 billion but given the fuzzy math they employ, there's great skepticism about even that number.

 

[Irishdude]

My point about Elon was that initially there was great braggadocio about DOGE saving $2 trillion. Then the number was reduced to $1 trillion. They claim to have saved $180 billion but given the fuzzy math they employ, there's great skepticism about even that number.

Agree completely. After mandated spending, there aren't that many targets, and every member of Congress has sacred cows in his or her district.

Elon had no idea what he was doing; as soon as he realized how hard it is to cut anything, he got out of Dodge.

 

[Knight]

I logged onto my credit card (only use one) to look at the feature -Spend Analyzer- It gave me the info for last year. I wish I could have copied & pasted the results that it shows for last year.

The category of interest is supermarkets. For the year the chart shows $2,618.87. That total divided by 12 = $218.24 a month to feed 2 people. $218.24 divided by 2 = $109.12

Calorie count per day of no interest to me. Taste & quantity to satisfy our appetites is all that matters. In other threads I've posted about how careful grocery shopping works for us. Grocery shopping for sale items like petite sirloin, 16 to 20 count shrimp, whole N Y strip roasts cut into individual N Y strip steaks or center cut pork chops on sale for $1.27 a lb. is something left over from the years we were poor & didn't know it.

Trade posted that the average benefit is $187.00 per person. Given our way of shopping I'm pretty sure that average $187.00 would provide enough money for those that don't shop carefully to eat well. It might be where I live that makes a difference because with 3 major food chains, a Sam's club a Cosco & 3 major Latin supermarkets all competing.

 

[Lawrence00]

$24.60 for canned tuna per month? Lol! The canned Tuna I buy, Starkist in extra virgin olive oil with roasted garlic runs $1.98 per 4.5 ounce can at Walmart and has 270 calories. With the 10% tax that I have to pay on groceries in this supposedly conservative low tax state that I live in that comes to $2.18 a can. So for $24.60 I can get 11.28 cans. That will give me 3,045 calories. Enough for about a day and a half. Or spread over a month that's about 100 calories a day. So show me how you can get another 1900 calories a day for a month for about $10 bucks worth of brown rice (which tastes awful by the way) and $5.76 worth of canned beans.

Better yet go back to the drawing board and show me how much a month you need to meet to meet a 2,000 calorie a day diet for a month. Show all your work. I wanna see actual numbers and calculations. As it stands now if I'm a high school home economics teacher I'd give you an "F" on what you have submitted so far.

Hey I'm trying to save your life The brown rice is more nutritious, you get what's on the plate. And you get the $1 a can tuna.

Walmart is open today. I have your shopping list. 60 cans of tuna, 20 lbs brown rice, 10 lbs black beans, 2 51 ounce bottles of olive oil, and 1 bottle of Equate Multivitamins. Bring $127 with you.

You might be able to get better pricing at Aldi and earn yourself a Snickers bar