Florida’s looming SNAP crisis: Miami will suffer while politicians play chicken | Opinion

On Saturday, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will stop being distributed, leading to nearly 3 million Floridians — or about 1 million households and including 1.5 million children — without reliable access to federal assistance to buy groceries.

In Miami-Dade County, where one in four households rely on SNAP, also known as food stamps, the consequences will be dire. Over half a million Miami-Dade residents could lose their SNAP benefits.

Cindy Huddleston, a senior policy analyst at Florida Policy Institute, said that in September alone, SNAP recipients in Miami-Dade spent over $100 million at local grocery stores, creating a ripple effect in the local economy while putting food on the table.

Miami-Dade has the highest share of seniors on SNAP in the state, the Herald has reported. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), three out of five households in the county include at least one or more senior citizens. These benefits for many are about survival, not luxury.

Florida’s food banks won’t be able to meet demand — for each single meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine, according to Huddleston. Food banks are “not set up to be able to run a mirror SNAP program,” said Huddleston.

Democratic lawmakers have called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency in order to release money from state reserves to feed families and help local food banks. DeSantis has rejected those calls. At a press conference in Tampa on Wednesday, he said, “Did those Democrats write a letter to [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer asking him to stop filibustering the spending? Come on.”

That partisan response may have earned a round of applause at the press conference, but it doesn’t feed the 3 million Floridians who may lose access to food assistance.

We recognize it’s not as simple as it seems for DeSantis to get funding to SNAP recipients. Most SNAP recipients use EBT cards issued by USDA. It’s unclear if there’s any way for funding from the state to be loaded onto EBT cards — even if money could be made available by the expected Nov. 1 cutoff.

But we also know that when the state wants to do something quickly — and find the money — it does. Alligator Alcatraz springs to mind. DeSantis didn’t wait for reimbursement from the feds. He had it built in eight days.

The state could offer relief by declaring a state of emergency, Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani told the Herald, or the Department of Children and Families could request a legislative committee amendment to redirect money to cover federal funding gaps.

The federal impasse is frustrating. The USDA has said a contingency fund can’t be used while the government is shut down. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, though, says the fund should be available.

The shutdown has entered its fifth week and both parties seem dug in. November 1 has been seen as a critical deadline when the shutdown would have massive implications for millions of Americans — especially in Florida. The looming increase in Obamacare costs — the central issue in the shutdown — is also set to hit hard in Florida, which has the largest number of enrollees in the country.

On the SNAP crisis, the USDA has time to reverse its position and release contingency funding to ensure recipients are able to fill their pantries for at least part of the month. That’s just a stopgap but at this point, we’d take it. It’s better than people actually going hungry due to politics.

Democrat governors and attorneys in over two dozen states sued the federal government, arguing that SNAP is an entitlement program that cannot be cut off. But Florida did not sign onto the lawsuit.

Washington, like Florida, can find money when it wants to. As millions of Floridians wait to see whether their SNAP benefits will be cut off, we wonder: How many people who hold the power to help them have ever been forced to choose between feeding their family and paying their bills?

This story was originally published October 30, 2025 at 5:05 PM.