The food stamp benefit is distributed monthly to about 1.3 million of its residents, or 43 percent of those living on the island, the spokesman said. The reductions bring the benefit levels back to where they were before the hurricane.

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The benefit cut, caused by an impasse among federal lawmakers over aid funding for the U.S. territory, has sparked new fears among Puerto Ricans about a critical lifeline for poorer residents amid an explosion of hunger since the hurricane hit.

“It is dangerous. People don’t have enough money to buy food already,” said Socorro Rivera, executive director of La Fondita de Jesús, a nonprofit group near San Juan that provides food for the homeless, who worries about being overwhelmed with new requests if the issue is not resolved soon.

“It’s obvious a lot of people will have severe problems,” Rivera said.

Several federal proposals have emerged that could quickly fund the program, though only temporarily. The Trump administration has now given its support for $600 million in additional food stamp benefits for Puerto Rico as part of a broader package spearheaded by Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a spokeswoman for the senator said.

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The Trump administration had previously dismissed House Democrats’ proposed $600 million plan to extend additional aid as “excessive and unnecessary,” amid a report in The Washington Post that President Trump told top White House officials he did not want a single dollar going to Puerto Rico because he thought the island was not using the money properly and was exploiting the federal government.

The prospects of a deal are uncertain, with Senate aides on Tuesday saying they did not know when a vote might be scheduled. Perdue included funding for the Puerto Rico food stamps program in a separate bill aiming to give financial aid for farmers in states such as Georgia to improve the legislation’s chances of passing, a spokeswoman for Perdue said.

There is no vote scheduled or timeline for passage. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) may bring up Perdue’s legislation this month, according to another source with knowledge of the issue who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the source was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.

House Democrats in January approved funding for Puerto Rico that would go beyond Perdue’s legislation, including a measure that would reduce Puerto Rico’s requirement to share the costs of some reconstruction projects.

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Some Senate Democrats are pushing to include similar measures in Perdue’s aid package. Four Democratic Senators, including presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), sent a letter to House and Senate leadership earlier this month saying they were “deeply disappointed” the GOP bill neglects additional assistance for Puerto Rico beyond food stamp money.

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in September 2017, leading to thousands of deaths, causing an estimated $90 billion in damage and devastating an economy that had already been in a recession for more than a decade.

Congress and the Trump administration have since approved more than $40 billion in emergency recovery money, as well as $1.27 billion in special food stamps funding, said Federico A. de Jesús, principal of FDJ Solutions, a consulting firm, and the former deputy director of the Puerto Rico governor’s office in Washington. At least $19 billion of that $40 billion has not yet been spent, de Jesús said.

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Left in the funding lurch are Puerto Rico residents like Valeria Delgado Rivera, 28, who relies on the food stamps program to feed her daughter. Her hours at a Spanish restaurant in the Puerto Rican town of Carolina were cut in half after the hurricane, increasing her dependence on the food stamps program. She said the cuts to the program may force her to buy only breakfast and dinner, once she receives her reduced benefit package later this month.

“For me, it’s difficult because the only help I get for buying food is from this program,” Rivera said. “Of course I’m scared.”

Puerto Rico’s food stamps program is uniquely dependent on periodic help from Congress, though the island does not have a voting representative in either the House or Senate, or a say in presidential elections.

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In mainland U.S. states, food stamp benefits expand or contract according to each state’s need. During the Great Recession, for instance, the size of the federal food stamps programs skyrocketed, as did the number of Americans who rely on it.

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Puerto Rico’s program works differently. The island administers a separate program — called the Nutrition Assistance Program, rather than the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (or “SNAP”) received by mainland states — through an annual block grant provided by the federal government.

Because of emergency funding from Congress, food stamp benefits for Puerto Rico residents rose to $649 a month for a family of four after Hurricane Maria, matching the size of the benefit a family of four typically receives in the rest of the United States. But with cuts starting, Puerto Rico has returned to paying $410 a month for a family of four on food stamp benefits, or about 40 percent less than that received by U.S. families, a spokeswoman for Puerto Rico’s Department of Family Affairs said.

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Even if approved by Congress, the additional $600 million allocation would fund the island’s food stamps program only until September 2019, de Jesús said.

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More than 330,000 elderly people are among the Puerto Rican residents on the food stamps program, territory officials said. An additional 22,000 families asked for aid over the past year were denied assistance, a spokeswoman for the Department of Family Affairs said.

On average, Puerto Ricans are four times as likely to be considered “food insecure” than people living on the mainland, with about 40 percent of the island considered to lack basic access to sufficient nutritious food, said Bread for the World, a nonprofit organization that aims to end hunger. Puerto Rico’s median income is about $20,000, less than half the poorest U.S. state.

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Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, said in an interview that the aid must be approved immediately and blasted the Trump administration’s January rejection of funding as “unrealistic and totally unhinged from the facts."

“This is not about politics — this is literally about people’s lives and their ability to feed their children and their elders in Puerto Rico,” Cruz said. “The need is still there.”