Things are getting real with the federal shutdown.
On Thursday, Oct. 23, the state senate’s Select Committee on Federal Impacts held a meeting at a Mexican restaurant in a Richfield strip mall to outline the shutdown’s impending impact on Minnesotans.
One pressing area of concern is the 125,000 Minnesotans who were set to get help with their heating bill on Nov. 1 through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.
In previous years, these residents would get about $550 spread out over the cool-to-freezing months to pay their utility bills. Now the state Commerce Department, which administers LIHEAP, is negotiating with utilities to cut these customers some slack with the federally funded program on ice.
Another looming issue is the 440,000 Minnesotans who will not see their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits starting Nov. 1.
Kari Thompson, CEO of VEAP, a Bloomington-based food pantry, said that even with these recipients currently getting benefits her nonprofit struggles with food costs and limited supply.
“We are really worried about how we are going to meet this need,” Thompson said. “The proteins are really hard to get.”
Meanwhile, the about 700 Transportation Security Administration staffers who live in the Twin Cities are expected to not get their customary paycheck Nov. 1.
“Personally, I’ve got a month’s worth of money saved and then I’m broke,” said Mark Johnson, president of the local public employees union that represents TSA screeners “It’s pretty bleak right now.”
Created last month by Senate DFLers, the Federal Impacts Committee initially focused on long-term changes in the social safety net as a result of the Big Beautiful Bill. But the shutdown has added a sense of urgency to the proceedings.
It also raises the question of what the state government has the power to do besides watch and worry, especially with the Legislature not scheduled to reconvene until February.
“We need to be thinking now about everything we can do,” said Lindsay Port, DFL-Burnsville, who has chaired these committee hearings. “Does the governor have emergency money that he can spend? Does he need to call us back to a special session about using a rainy day fund or raising a tax on something to be a backfill to federal resources?”
Port also said it is a time to think creatively. She floated the idea of state legislatures throughout the country pooling their resources, or otherwise collaborating to keep these social services going.
The federal cuts “are just not something that we can fully backfill, but it is our responsibility to do everything we can,” Port said.
This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
