HOUSTON \u2013 Wall Street closed the week with record highs on Friday as the S&P 500 topped 6,800 for the first time in history. <\/p>\n
The rally follows new data showing inflation slowed more than expected, fueling optimism that the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates next week.<\/p>\n
But the positive economic news comes as the federal government shutdown threatens to leave millions of Americans without Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in November \u2014 including more than 877,000 people across the Houston area. Those benefits help families pay for basic groceries, including ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner.<\/p>\n
Matagorda County is the latest to confirm to KPRC 2 News that it cannot afford to fund SNAP benefits without federal assistance. These are working Texas families, doing their best to put food on the table, now caught in the middle of a political standoff.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2\u2019s Zach Lashway heard from U.S. Congressman Al Green and spoke with U.S. Senator John Cornyn in Houston Friday \u2014 both addressing the urgent need for relief.<\/p>\n
At the St. Regis Hotel in the Galleria area, Sen. John Cornyn joined other Republican senators to discuss economic growth. Across town, Rep. Al Green met with labor leaders to focus on the shutdown\u2019s fallout, particularly the strain on working families.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are suffering. As you know, there are people who are going to lose their SNAP benefits. We are fighting to protect those SNAP benefits. There is a reserve that has about $5 billion in it, but it takes about $8 billion to cover the month of November. So, we are appealing for the party in power to supplement the $5 billion in the reserve with $3 billion so that people will get their SNAP benefits during the month of November,\u201d explained Rep. Al Green.<\/p>\n
Roughly 300,000 Harris County families rely on SNAP each month. If the shutdown continues past Monday, those families could lose about $400 in food assistance for November.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2\u2019s Zach Lashway asked Sen. John Cornyn about this reality: \u201cYou mention people impacted by this shutdown \u2014 some 300,000 families here in Harris County alone depend on SNAP benefits. You talk about these blue lines, these red lines \u2014 I\u2019m not sure these families are concerned about what\u2019s happening among those lines as they are about feeding their families.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI agree with you, they want food on the table, but unfortunately these are the consequences of the political stunt we\u2019re seeing to shut down the government. I agree with you, people don\u2019t care about red vs. blue, they don\u2019t care about the politics, but this frankly is not about differences in politics or policies between Republicans or Democrats. This is all a desperate attempt by Chuck Schumer to survive the domination of this radical element led by Bernie Sanders and AOC,\u201d responded Cornyn.<\/p>\n
Lashway pressed further. \u201cYou say that, but when people look at the House, Senate and presidency \u2014 they\u2019re all Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, they\u2019re not. No, they\u2019re not. We have small majorities in the House and 53 Republicans in the Senate, and as we discussed earlier, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass something the House has already passed, and this used to be routine,\u201d explained Cornyn.<\/p>\n
Lashway followed with, \u201cWhat are you doing to ensure your Texans are not hurting \u2014 that they are not going without food? What are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI voted to open the government every single time and we\u2019re doing everything we can to break this blockade, misguided, dumb, blockade by Democrats,\u201d said Cornyn.<\/p>\n
Rep. Green offered a different view, blaming Republican leadership for allowing the shutdown to happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne party has control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and they could have prevented the shutdown because they have the votes to prevent the shutdown if they would only prioritize the shutdown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both lawmakers told KPRC 2 News they have requested that their own pay be withheld while their staff \u2014 along with thousands of federal employees nationwide \u2014 go without pay.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Wall Street closed the week with record highs on Friday as the S&P 500 topped 6,800…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[918,49,56,58,57,66,2349,223,7951,4250,7716],"class_list":{"0":"post-20138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-food","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news","13":"tag-local","14":"tag-money","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-snap","17":"tag-snap-benefits","18":"tag-wall-street"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}