America's Talking - Record-long govt shutdown threatens food, early childhood education assistance

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

(The Center Square) – Senate Democrats are set to block Republicans’ government funding bill for the 12th time Wednesday, keeping the federal government shut down despite tens of millions of low-income Americans at risk of losing food stamps or early childhood education assistance. Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture will resume core Farm Service Agency financial services Thursday, the unfunded agency cannot provide money to support SNAP or WIC benefits for the month of November, which together serve up to 49 million people. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxRead more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_930b106e-32b0-4845-b219-31be188a3024.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are now in the fourth week of the federal government shutdown because most Senate Democrats are withholding their votes from advancing a continuing resolution to fund government agencies at the same levels they had bet. And while many Americans haven't felt too much of an impact of the shutdown, if it continues into November, which is next week, millions of people will lose access to food benefits, child care, and more. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square congressional reporter, Terrez Boudreau. Teres, you wrote about many of those impacts at thecentersquare.com. Tell us more.

Yeah, well, you're right. Like you said, the majority of Americans, those who aren't federal workers, haven't really been feeling much of the impact yet. I've actually talked to someone just the other day who didn't know we were in a government shutdown. But, you know, it's been going on for more than three weeks at this point. Senators have let us today. Today is Friday morning and senators have already left for the weekend. So that means that by the time they return, it's going to be, shutdown's going to be entering, it's going to be nearly its fourth week.

And it will have been 26 days at the very least, which is approaching the record 30. days. So it's, it's, it's getting, it's getting pretty close. Um, the, while most people aren't feeling stuff as much right now, aren't really feeling the, the effects. It's going to, um, get worse for some because SNAP benefits, a supplemental nutrition, uh, assistance program, um, also known as food stamps. A lot of states are warning that a lot of state governors are warning that they're not going to have enough money to subsidize benefits for November if this shutdown continues. And as you noted, November is approaching really quickly. There have been some

governors, Governor Glenn Yonkin from Virginia, who said that he's going to declare a state of emergency, actually, so that the SNAP benefits can still be funded. But not all, I mean, He's the only one as of now that I know of who's doing that. And not all governors are probably able to do that or willing to do that. So we're talking about potentially tens of millions of people who are going to be either not getting their SNAP benefits at all or they're going to be delayed or reduced. And so that really impacts food security. I mean, there are around 42 million people on SNAP right now across the country. So that's some pretty serious, pretty serious issue.

And that includes a lot of children. I'm sorry to interrupt you, Terrez, but we're talking children in this case, too. That's true about, I think around $6 million or something like that. Yeah, so it's not good. And so that's one of the more serious impacts that people are probably going to see soon. But then there's other things that are going to get worse, that happen, getting steadily worse. such as flight delays. So air traffic controllers have been working without pay since the shutdown began, so October 1st. And a lot of them are calling out sick because they need to be able to pay

their bills, pay their rent, pay their mortgage, all these, all these things. And so they pick up side, call on sick and pick up side jobs. And so that's leading to getting reports a lot of delays. And so as it drags on and as more and more of them don't see any money coming in and miss their paychecks and are just working without pay, a lot of them are going to see a lot more of this pattern, probably. And so that not only affects these workers and their families, but also affects the American public who's traveling. So it's not looking great where we're at right now because there really doesn't seem to be any appetit. tight on either side right now, for either Democrats or Republicans in Congress to fix this. And they both seem to be just waiting each other out and hoping it seems that the bad effects will pressure, you know, the other side to come to a table and negotiate on something.

But it doesn't look like that's going to be the case. Is part of a – in what was meant to be sort of a stopgap, Republicans, tried to get a bill passed that would at least pay troops and essential workers during the shutdown. But that was also blocked by Democrats. Yes, that's right. That was Thursday. They had that vote. So Republicans, because the shutdown's going on for so long, and Border Patrol agents, federal police officers, you know, a lot of these workers considered essential TSA officers, airtrop controllers, they're working without pay.

military, active duty military service members did get a paycheck October 15th, but only because the Pentagon dipped into some untapped research and development funds. So their next pay date is approaching, and that's probably not going to get covered. So Republicans introduced a bill, the shutdown fairness act, that not only for this shutdown, but also for any shutdowns in the future, it would guarantee. that members, active-duty members of the military and most essential workers, like, you know, listed before, would get paid during the shutdown. They wouldn't have to work without pay. It wouldn't have covered the hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers, those deemed non-essential, you know, so different staff positions at the FDA or EPA or things like that. And so Democrats opposed that bill for two reasons.

So there were three Democrats who didn't, but the rest of the Senate Democrats did. One of the reasons, and this seemed to be the main one, was that they thought that it would give away some of their leverage. Because again, all Democrats need to do right now to reopen the government is Republicans just need five more of them in the Senate to vote for the continuing resolution. But they're not doing that. And so they have these cards that they're playing, that they're hoping and going to help them. like they have, you know, they're saying, well, we're holding out because we're fighting for health care. And so if the, and so they're trying to blame the effects of a shutdown on Republicans. But if they voted for a bill and a lot of those bad impacts, such as federal

workers working without pay or averted, then they don't have as much leverage to pressure Republicans to, to fold to the health care policy demands. So that was one reason. And, you know, Democrats have admitted that. And then another reason was that there were some Democratic senators who said that the bill didn't go far enough. They wanted it to cover all federal workers. So, you know, if the government shut down, then even workers who aren't working, federal workers who aren't working would get paid, which that would be quite a change, definitely. And they introduced a bill to that end, but that's Republicans don't support that, aren't going to support that. So, yes, that bill, the Shutdown Fairness Act failed.

And so there really hasn't been any progress since October 1st. I mean, there's been incidents, there's been talks, there's been bills introduced that have failed, but nothing is moving at this point. DeRez, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with the ongoing government shutdown story and the impacts on everyday Americans at thecentersquare.com.