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... SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is the country's largest anti-hunger program.
Stephanie Rogers at her mother's home outside Denver, where she and her two daughters now live. Rogers has dipped into her retirement to help the family get through the federal shutdown.

"The vast majority are children, working people, older Americans, veterans and people with disabilities," Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, says of food stamp recipients. "If the SNAP program shuts down, we will have the most mass hunger suffering we've had in America since the Great Depression." ...

Food aid advocates say USDA can and should keep funding SNAP. "SNAP still has billions of dollars in what are called contingency reserves," says Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research and policy institute. That wouldn't cover the entire amount, but she says the agency could legally transfer additional funds, as they've done for the WIC nutrition program. In fact, Bergh argues USDA has a legal obligation to fund SNAP since it's an entitlement program.

Department officials did not respond to an NPR query about whether there is such a legal obligation.

The origins of U.S. food benefits go back to the Great Depression. If funding does lapse next month, Bergh says, "We would be in uncharted territory." ...