"Imagine you're someone a family who is working a job or two or even three, and then all of a sudden, with a week before the end of the month, you learn that the money you had been counting on to purchase food for you and your family isn't going to be there on Saturday, November 1st," Karen Ehrens said on this episode of Plain Talk. "Probably you have rent due or you're a senior on a fixed income scraping by till the end of the month, looking forward to when you might get some help so you can buy groceries. And then you learn a few days before Saturday that that money won't be there."

"It's beyond frustrating," she added. It's also unprecedented. "It's a never-before-seen event that's coming," she said.

Ehrens is the Bismarck-based U.S. Policy Manager for the Alliance to End Hunger, and she's referring to funding for food stamps running out due to the shutdown of the federal government. She is predicting a lot of suffering for vulnerable people. "Nationally, on average, four out of five households that receive SNAP benefits have a child, an elderly person, a person with disabilities," she said. "So, that's who gets SNAP first and foremost."

But it doesn't have to be like this, she argued. "They could end this with a decision to release funds that are in an account, and transfer some money over that way, put enough money out around $8 billion to keep SNAP going through the month of November."

This interview with Ehrens was recorded before Gov. Kelly Armstrong announced $1.5 million in state assistance to food banks and other programs to help mitigate the blow of halted funding, but she said that while it helps, it's nowhere near enough. "For every meal that's provided through the food bank network across the US, there are eight meals provided by SNAP. So, it's a big gap to fill."

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