NEARLY 42 million American workers and their families face losing access to food stamps as funding for what is officially called the Supplement Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) ends on 1st November.
SNAP funding is being ended by the three week long federal shutdown, as Republican and Democrats are embroiled in a stand-off over Trump’s policy of slashing funding for medical provision to the poorest.
SNAP is a vital lifeline offering meagre food support to working families with low-paid jobs, low-income people aged over 60 and those with disabilities struggling by on fixed incomes.
According to the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities those getting food stamps must be at or below 130% of the federal poverty line!
On average, those eligible for food stamps receive just $187 a month – not enough to keep food on the table in a US economy where food price inflation is soaring. Now, even this paltry amount is on the point of being taken away.
Food stamps are used by one in every eight Americans, but this didn’t stop the Trump administration from refusing to let the US Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, to draw on a contingency fund that would have continued benefits for just a matter of weeks.
This refusal was on the grounds that this contingency fund was for potential emergencies such as a natural disaster. 42 million workers, their families and children starving on the streets doesn’t constitute an emergency for Trump and the US ruling class.
It most certainly isn’t a ‘natural’ disaster, but the result of a bankrupt US capitalist system crushed beneath the weight of a national debt that has hit $38 trillion.
This is a historic high that Trump and the capitalist class he serves are determined must be paid for by US workers regardless of the cost to their lives.
In fact, while the standoff between Republicans and Democrats is being held responsible for SNAP being ended Trump, in his ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ last April, had already cut around $187 billion in funding for the programme through to 2034 according to a congressional budget office estimate.
Trump’s Act provided billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and US corporations while slashing medical provision and food stamps that 42 million American workers rely on to stave off starvation.
If the funding for food stamps runs out in two days’ time Joel Berg, chief executive officer of Hunger Free America, told the press: ‘We will have the greatest hunger catastrophe in America since the Great Depression, and I don’t say that as hyperbole.’
The powerful American working class will not accept being driven back to the starvation era of the 1930s Great Depression in order to save the profits and wealth of the bankers, Wall Street speculators, and the tiny band of tech multi-billionaires.
Seven million Americans took to the streets across the US in the ‘No Kings Day’ demonstrations opposing Trump as US workers and youth showed their determination to fight against the growing move to authoritarian rule.
While Trump is denying emergency funding to ward off starvation he has authorised emergency funds to pay the wages of US military on active service across the world and in the American cities he has sent troops into.
The American ruling class in its desperation is preparing for a civil war to impose the capitalist crisis on a working class that is rising up and determined not to be driven into poverty.
With capitalism internationally diving over the cliff into recession and economic collapse the ruling class is preparing for a class war to the finish to impose its crisis on the backs of workers.
The powerful working class in the US, UK and Europe must urgently organise its strength by taking mass general strike action to bring down their capitalist governments and advance to workers’ governments and socialism.
The burning issue today is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to provide the leadership required for the working class to take power and dump bankrupt capitalism in the dustbin of history with the victory of the World Socialist Revolution.
