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LINCOLN — The 43-day federal government shutdown this year left a period of uncertainty for Nebraskans receiving food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including a failed special session call at the request of some state lawmakers.
Many local communities, churches and nonprofits stepped up during the longest shutdown on record. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen made clear that Nebraska would not pick up the federal bill, a difference from leaders in some other states who released emergency funds. President Donald Trump also refused to use contingency funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Nobody’s going to go hungry,” Pillen said at a Nov. 6 news conference. Days later, in his monthly call-in show Nov. 10 with the Nebraska Broadcaster’s Association, Pillen confirmed: “We, the state, are not going to provide SNAP benefits, pure and simple, if the federal government doesn’t.”
The shutdown ended when Trump signed a new spending bill late Nov. 12. A group of 15 state lawmakers — 14 Democrats and the Legislature’s one nonpartisan progressive — had tried to force a special session to make Pillen cover SNAP payments and fund Head Start preschool and nutrition programs.
The lawmaker-sought session also pushed for general changes in state law to address the rising costs of food, household necessities and other essential goods.
Only items specified in a special session call can be considered during such a session. Had it been successful, it would have been the Unicameral’s first senator-initiated special session.
But by the 5 p.m. deadline on Nov. 14, no more senators had signed on to the special session call.
The letter from State Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh of Omaha needed at least 18 more senators to agree that a special session was warranted.
“I still think that it was important to do, to show the people of Nebraska that legislators were trying to do something to help alleviate the burden everybody is under,” said Cavanaugh, who led the special session call.
The lone Democratic lawmaker not to join the call was State Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, who told the Nebraska Examiner he supported the effort but couldn’t confirm his support as he was out of the country.
Had the shutdown continued, Pillen said Nebraska would have picked up the $100,000-a-day cost for WIC, the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program that supports low-income pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding mothers, as well as qualifying infants and children up to age five.
Pillen said Nebraskans take care of each other and that he was “old and long enough in the tooth” to remember when neighbors and churches helped one another, a “better” model than government involvement. He repeatedly said Nebraska would “go back the way we used to do it years ago, before the government got involved.”
The country’s first “Food Stamp Program” began in 1939 and ended in 1943, according to USDA. A revised pilot program came in 1961, when Pillen was five years old. It became permanent in 1964.
Pillen urged callers to reach out to churches, food banks and other Nebraskans stepping up. He said the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services was “standing on top of” the situation, but that Nebraska was not the federal government.
The next caller, a staffer for Nebraska Democratic Party, said Pillen's answer was a “cop out.” Pillen responded that Nebraskans know when someone is in need and help.
“If you just stand there and think the government is going to solve every problem, ‘no’,” Pillen said. “That’s not a ‘cop out.’ Pun intended, thinking the government is going to feed everybody is hogwash.”
Omaha Mayor John Ewing Jr., was among many local officials organizing community responses. His office launched and helped a citywide food drive with city and county officials directing available funds to nonprofits and community partners.
Cavanaugh said lawmakers had “no idea” when the shutdown was going to end or what would happen with SNAP. Come Oct. 31, with slightly more clarity about how the federal government would respond, or wouldn’t, she and her colleagues decided not to wait.
State Sen. Ashlei Spivey of Omaha, a member of the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee with Cavanaugh, said the special session call was meant to provide leadership, because Nebraskans were in need.
“We’re glad that it’s restored for folks now, and that doesn’t change the crisis that we are coming into,” Spivey said.
