After an unnecessary, weeks-long disruption, more than 1.4 million Ohioans should have their federal food benefits for November, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services confirmed on Thursday.
Even though a federal judge ordered him to disburse the funds, President Donald Trump held up the payments to 42 million Americans starting on Nov. 1.
Trump blamed the disruption on the partial shutdown of the federal government. But the government had money to temporarily fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Federal courts ordered him to do so as other presidents have done so in all previous federal shutdowns.
The suspension of benefits sparked a crisis, with many Ohio food pantries reporting record demand.
After the government reopened last week, the state agency that administers SNAP started working to get food benefits out the door.
The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services “has distributed benefits to over 95% of all SNAP recipients in Ohio,” spokesman Tom Betti said in an email Thursday afternoon. “We expect to be at 100% by tomorrow.
Because of the way that funds flow through the system, there are a small number of cases that require manual activity on our part to push them through to the beneficiaries and is a common occurrence that happens every month.”
This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal. View the original article.
