Millions face delayed tax refunds, cuts to food stamps as White House scrambles to deal with shutdow
Source: wash post
Millions face delayed tax refunds, cuts to food stamps as White House scrambles to deal with shutdown’s consequences
1 hr ago
Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy.
The Trump administration, which had not anticipated a long-term shutdown, recognized only this week the breadth of the potential impact, several senior administration officials said. The officials said they’re focused now on understanding the scope of the consequences and determining whether there is anything they can do to intervene.
Thousands of federal programs are affected by the shutdown, but few intersect with the public as much as the tax system and the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a modern-day version of food stamps.
The partial shutdown has cut off new funding to the Treasury Department and the USDA, leaving them largely unstaffed and crippling both departments’ ability to fulfill core functions...............
Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/millions-face-delayed-tax-refunds-cuts-to-food-stamps-as-white-house-scrambles-to-deal-with-shutdown%e2%80%99s-consequences/ar-BBROykA
I imagine most trumpsters will be happy that folks will not be getting their good stamps.
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as hundreds of TSA screeners call out sick @ JFK airport each day... and they refuse to mention what else USDA does besides SNAP.... like... ummm... inspecting meat and poultry (most likely with a much-reduced staff)? 
The lazy reporters also won't tell you that FDA gets its funding, not from HHS (which is its parent organization which did manage to pull off the rare feat of getting an appropriation), but from USDA's agricultural appropriation. They won't tell you about the National Weather Service which is under the unfunded Commerce Department and on and on...
The media spent the first week babbling out nonsense about "only 25% of the federal government is impacted" and then spent this second week pointing to trash at national parks, not taking into account what that "25%" meant - and notably because we are talking about everyone in all but 3 departments.
During the last shutdown in 2013, the GOP cherry-picked some funding for certain agencies as the shutdown dragged on to minimize the horrible optics. This time they are completely zombified.
