The longest government shutdown in U.S. history had an outsized impact on already vulnerable residents in Bexar County.

Now that it’s over, local leaders say the panic over delayed food assistance and at-risk health care subsidies should paint a clear picture of what’s coming down the pipeline for a community consistently ranked among the most impoverished large cities.

Republicans’ signature economic policy since taking control of the White House in November, signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, makes big cuts to Medicaid, environmental programs and food benefits to help pay for tax cuts, increased defense spending and border security.

“To give you an idea of the need in our community, in Bexar County, $50 million worth of SNAP benefits comes into our community every single month,” Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones said on a Texas Tribune Festival panel Friday morning.

“It was unprecedented for those benefits not to be forward-paid to those folks that would need it during the shutdown,” Jones said, ” … [and] what it did is give us a really good idea of, unfortunately, what the implementation of that lovely, Big Beautiful Bill is going to look like.”

Food insecurity in Bexar County

San Antonio famously experienced lines around the block at its food bank when residents were out of work during the COVID-19 shutdown — a situation Jones said could soon repeat if leaders aren’t careful.

On Friday, Jones and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai were joined by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio), who had just returned from Thursday’s government funding vote in Washington.

The Texas Tribune’s politics editor Jasper Scherer moderates a panel with U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai during the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival in downtown Austin. Credit: Eli Hartman for The Texas Tribune

Castro was among the vast majority of Democrats disappointed to see some members of his party break with Republicans on a temporary spending measure that ended the shutdown by punting Congress’s next funding deadline to January — but didn’t make good on the goal of securing health care tax credits set to expire at the end of the year.

He said that meant all of the pain Americans felt over federal worker furloughs, flight delays and eventually, a dip in the economy, was for naught.

“There was one major thing that Democrats asked for … which is we should have extended those [Affordable Care Act] tax credits, because the No. 1 thing that bankrupts people is health care debt,” Castro said. “I wish the deal [to reopen the government] had been for the one thing that we were fighting for on behalf of Americans.”

Congress is expected to revisit the health care subsidies in December before they expire.

But both Jones and Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai have been warning for months that any federal cuts to social safety net programs will likely leave local governments to pick up the costs — making the budgets the city and county approved in September a mere guess at what community needs will look like in the coming months.

Jones has the City Council doing wartime drills to plan their next move if Metro Health’s budget is slashed, or other federal grants accounting for more than $150 million in the city budget evaporate.

“At the city level, we have a little bit of a [budget] gap in fiscal year 2026, but the gap that we’re all very concerned about is fiscal year 2027,” Jones said. “We have a plan to close it. But as you all know, that budget ain’t final, that gap ain’t closed.”

Similarly, Sakai is convening local stakeholders for summits on food insecurity and health care, aimed at preparing for federal cuts.

“I just had a conversation with Congressman Castro this morning as we were briefing in the green room, and one of the questions I asked him was, ‘Okay, the federal government’s back on, is there any silver lining? Is there any optimism?’” Sakai said on Friday’s panel.

“What we have … even with the continuing resolution, is a cut to food stamps. We have a cut at the end of the year on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. We’ve got cuts to Medicaid,” he continued. “We have people going hungry. … I hope the people in power in Washington, D.C. behind these federal policies understand the effect it’s having on our community, on working families, especially the most vulnerable.”

Voter sentiment

Jones said she was especially worried about the impact on reproductive health care, which has already taken a funding hit from the loss of a Title X Family Planning Program, and would be further imperiled by Medicaid cuts.

Some of the federal policy changes approved over the summer still hinge on Congress reaching a true spending agreement, instead of keeping current spending levels frozen through stop-gap measures.

But during the shutdown, Jones said, it became clear that states are finding a way to proceed with planned cuts anyway, according to leaders at the San Antonio Food Bank.

“One of the things that they’re unfortunately getting wind of is the potential implementation of the Big, Beautiful Bill sooner rather than later, based on some of the leeway that the states have to implement that,” Jones said.

Speaking on a separate panel the previous day, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio), suggested national Republicans were indeed starting to feel the heat from economic woes.

U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio, is interviewed during a one-on-one conversation at the 2025 Texas Tribune Festival. Credit: Eddie Gaspar /The Texas Tribune

The GOP overall had a bad election night on Nov. 4, in which some groups that had been moving toward the Republican Party, in particular Hispanic voters, swung hard the other way.

Now Trump’s White House is considering “stimulus checks” he said would be paid for by revenue from his tariff policies.

“The fact that President Trump is looking at distributing these $2,000 checks out to folks, because a lot of people are hurting, I think that just goes to show that could be an area that all of a sudden, Hispanic Americans go, ‘Wait a second. Maybe my government hasn’t forgotten about me,’” Gonzales said.