As Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich continue to stand by the GOP’s “we will not negotiate with Democrats” approach to the shutdown, nearly 70,000 disabled and low-income Alaskans are expected to lose access to federal food assistance starting next month.
That’s about one in every 11 Alaskans.
The Alaska Division of Public Assistance said on Monday that the state is running out of funding for its food stamp program due to the shutdown and that recipients will lose assistance starting in November. In the announcement, the agency said it explored supplanting the funding with state money but “determined that a state subsidy was not mechanically possible under the federal payment system.”
“As a result of the ongoing federal government shutdown, the (federal government) has directed states to stop the issuance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for the month of November due to insufficient federal funds. This means that Alaskans may not receive SNAP benefits for November, even if they are authorized to receive them,” said the announcement from the state. “An estimated 66,471 Alaskans will not be issued their November benefits until funding is restored.”
It’s the latest nightmare for recipients, who have already faced delays in getting qualified and receiving benefits for years due to chronic understaffing by the state. In 2022, when the backlog was particularly dire, thousands of eligible households waited months or more to receive help. Amid the delays, the state’s food bank system was pushed to its breaking point, with one official warning at the time that “people are literally starving.”
And the problems, like issues in Alaska, have been felt far more sharply in rural areas where groceries are more expensive and less dependable than in road system communities.
On the federal front, there’s been little indication that anything is changing as the federal shutdown reached week three.
At the core of the continued shutdown is the refusal of Republicans like Begich and Sullivan to meaningfully engage with Democrats to secure the necessary votes to reopen the government.
Democrats see the shutdown as their only leverage to extend critical subsidies that make buying health insurance through the individual marketplace — the go-to source of coverage for small businesses and the self-employed — somewhat affordable. Without the subsidies, thousands in Alaska would see their insurance premiums skyrocket next year, with some seeing premium increases as high as $48,000 for the year.
With such high costs, it’s likely that health care coverage will become unaffordable for many, leaving thousands without coverage. Some Republicans have signaled support for the subsidies, but have suggested that there needs to be reforms to address apparent fraud and abuse in the private health insurance market (there’s not).
And that’s on top of the thousands of low-income adults who will likely lose coverage to Medicaid and food stamps once the bureaucratically burdensome work requirements contained in Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill — which Alaska’s Congressional Delegation unanimously supported — go into effect.
But rather than offering Democrats any guarantees for their votes to reopen — something increasingly difficult given President Trump’s largely unchecked power to ignore budgets approved by Congress — they’ve insisted there will be no negotiations until the government is reopened.
“They need to vote for the clean CR again,” Begich said to KTUU. “If they choose not to open the government, they will be putting politics above the well-being of Americans in need.”
“Democrats have voted 11 times to keep the government closed,” Sullivan’s spokesperson told the station in a statement. “They can solve this tomorrow by voting for a clean Continuing Resolution.”
What they’re leaving out is that it would require Democrats to give up their leverage and trust Republicans like Begich and Sullivan, which, given everything, is asking a lot.
The trust deficit is something that the third member of Alaska’s congressional delegation, the sorta-moderate U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, admitted last week is a major roadblock to getting anything done. She conceded that the Trump administration’s inclination to ignore budgets passed by Congress, through the “pocket recession,” has largely blown up lawmakers’ ability to negotiate.
“If you’re a Democrat, you’re looking at it, and you’re saying, ‘Why am I going to try to be helpful, if Mr. Vought and OMB is just going to do a backdoor move and rescind what we’ve been working on?’” Murkowski told reporters outside the Capitol. “So, yeah, there’s a lack of trust. Does it make it harder to come to terms on hard things like a government shutdown? Absolutely, it makes it harder.”
Over the weekend, Murkowski’s frustrations with her colleagues’ blame-game antics boiled over, with her telling the Alaska Federation of Natives during her address that it was like two kids fighting in the back seat.
“I don’t care who started it. Knock it off, or I’m going to stop the car, and we’re going to have a conversation. I feel like we need to stop the car and get Congress working again,” she said, according to the ADN. “Congress’ failure to do our work is inexcusable. Instead of blaming the other side, let’s solve the issue.”
As of Tuesday, the blame game continued.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
