State House leaders say they won’t use rainy day fund to keep SNAP benefits flowing

Top Massachusetts House Democrats made clear that they do not plan to turn to Massachusetts’ rainy day fund to bail out federal food assistance benefits that are set to run out of cash this week because of the federal government shutdown.

Massachusetts has a roughly $8.6 billion reserve account elected officials can turn to in times of crisis — the most money the emergency fund has ever had. But House Speaker Ron Mariano said Wednesday that using that money to backfill lost funding for federal programs would leave lawmakers “picking winners and losers.”

Mariano said the rainy day fund would quickly run dry if it were used to support federal programs that are running out of money, which includes heating assistance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Replacing SNAP alone would cost roughly $240 million per month.

“It’s the federal government who is choosing not to fund these things. This is the first time SNAP hasn’t been funded in any of these government shutdowns, and that’s a choice that the president has made,” the Quincy Democrat told reporters.

Federal funds could run out starting Saturday for the federal program that helps people all around the country buy food if Congress does not reach a deal by the weekend to end the government shutdown.

The Trump administration said earlier this month that it will not turn to a $5 billion contingency fund to keep food aid flowing into November if the shutdown persists.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell and more than two dozen other Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its decision to suspend benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Gov. Maura Healey said earlier this week that there is “no way that this state, or any state, can begin to backfill or cover” the loss of SNAP funding and called on the Trump administration to use the contingency fund.

“What needs to happen is the president of the United States needs to do what every other president in history has done, which is to use the contingency fund of billions of dollars to fund the SNAP program,” she said Tuesday.

Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation President Doug Howgate said Beacon Hill budget writers regularly used the rainy day fund to balance the state budget in the wake of the 2008-2009 recession, and the last “meaningful” withdrawal from the account was in 2014.

But he cautioned against using the rainy day to keep a program like SNAP running during a federal government shutdown.

“While I absolutely understand how critical it is that the state develop a strategy to mitigate impacts of SNAP, I would caution against using the stabilization fund for that. Because the reality is, when we see a temporary economic shock, which eventually we will see, that is when we are going to need to have a rainy day fund that is significant to help us move through that,” he said.

Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, a North End Democrat who is the top budget writer in the House, said lawmakers are “looking at all options” related to SNAP.

“This isn’t just about one particular deadline or one particular element that’s not being funded by the federal government,” he said. “There’s … concerns about the slippery slope that we could fall into about completely replacing federal dollars.”