local military families turning to food pantries during week three of the government shutdown<\/a> but local and federal leaders are also raising the alarm. <\/p>\nWatch the full story here:<\/p>\n
Worries over Texas SNAP recipients grow amid federal government shutdown<\/p>\n
Bob Gager is the CEO of The Shepherd\u2019s Heart food pantry in Waco.<\/p>\n
As he walked, 25 News’ Bobby Poitevint through their pantry, he said they are now serving 12,000 more families compared to this time last year \u2014 a trend he’s seen grow all year long.<\/p>\n
However, as we creep further into the federal government shutdown, he\u2019s worried about all families but especially single moms and those families using SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n
Gager said, \u201cthe need is growing.”<\/p>\n
However, he\u2019s not alone.<\/p>\n
South Texas U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar taking to Facebook late last week and said in part \u201cA long government shutdown threatens critical nutrition assistance \u2014 SNAP benefits will continue through October, but if the shutdown persists, future payments could be disrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Food Lifeline, a member of the nonprofit Feeding America, is urging people to contact their legislators right now to have your voice heard, believing the longer the shutdown goes on the larger the impact on families who rely on federal programs to put food on the table.<\/p>\n
As of now, Gager said they haven\u2019t seen a whole lot of change during the first full week of the shutdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen some distributions where we ran out of food and didn\u2019t expect to really run out that fast and it wasn\u2019t like we were totally unprepared it\u2019s just we had a strong need and we\u2019ve only had a few of those.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Gager said he wants to be optimistic right now about the shutdown, he knows the reality which could be heading our way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t get down to the works \u2014 and get this thing solved it could hurt a lot of people,\u201d Gager said.<\/p>\n
Follow Bobby on social media!<\/p>\n
More stories from Bobby Poitevint<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WACO, Texas (KXXV) \u2014 Concerns over food insecurity and Texas SNAP recipients grow as the federal government shutdown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7526,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7336,7337,49,1857,7338,7339,7340,7335,7341,4826,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-7525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-benefits","tag-federal","tag-food","tag-government-shutdown","tag-government-shutdown-food-pantries","tag-local-food-pantry","tag-pantry","tag-shepherds-heart","tag-shepherds-heart-in-waco","tag-shutdown","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525","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=7525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}