About 43 percent of Puerto Rico’s residents are grappling with a sudden cut to a benefit they rely on for groceries and other essentials.

The federal government provided additional food stamp aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017, but Congress missed the deadline for reauthorization in March as it focused on other issues before leaving for a week-long recess.

Federal lawmakers have also been stalled by the Trump administration, which has derided the extra aid as unnecessary.

While Congress may address this issue soon, the lapse underscores the broader vulnerability of Puerto Rico’s economy, as well as key safeguards of its safety net, to the whims of an increasingly hostile federal government with which it has feuded over key priorities.

Puerto Rico will again need the federal government’s help to stave off drastic cuts to Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor and disabled, as well as for the disbursement of billions in hurricane relief aid that has not yet been turned over to the island.

The island would not need Congress to step in to fund its food stamps and Medicaid programs if it were a state. For U.S. states, the federal government has committed to funding these programs’ needs, whatever the cost and without needing to take a vote. But Puerto Rico instead funds its programs through a block grant from the federal government, which need to be regularly renewed, and also gives food stamp benefits about 40 percent smaller than those of U.S. states.

After initially vowing to reject the food stamp funding, President Trump has agreed to the emergency request to help Senate Republicans pass a broader disaster relief package, which may be taken up for a vote this week.

But at an Oval Office meeting on Feb. 22, Trump asked top advisers for ways to limit federal support from going to Puerto Rico, believing it is taking money that should be going to the mainland, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of the presidents’ private remarks.

The meeting — an afternoon session focused on Housing and Urban Development grants — ended abruptly, and Trump has continued to ask aides how much money the island will get. Then, Trump said he wanted the money to only fortify the electric grid there.

Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo / The Washington Post. The Agranel supermarket chain in Puerto Rico has hired at least two employees in each of its 37 stores since Hurricane Maria. The Agranel supermarket chain in Puerto Rico has hired at least two employees in each of its 37 stores since Hurricane Maria. (Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo / The Washington Post.)

Trump has also privately signaled he will not approve any additional help for Puerto Rico beyond the food stamp money, setting up a congressional showdown with Democrats who have pushed for more expansive help for the island.

A senior administration official with direct knowledge of the meeting described Trump’s stance: “He doesn’t want another single dollar going to the island.”

Trump's growing anger at Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico’s government first started cutting benefits for food stamp beneficiaries by an average of 25 percent during the first week of March. By March 12, more than 670,000 people had received reduced monthly food stamp payments. The cuts were in effect for the entire program by Friday.

Congressional lawmakers knew of these deadlines for months. In January, House Democrats approved $600 million in additional food stamp funding to finance the program until the fall, but the bill immediately stalled in the Senate with the Trump administration releasing a letter calling the additional food stamp aid “excessive and unnecessary.”

Multiple Senate Republicans, led by Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), have incorporated the $600 million for Puerto Rico in legislation aimed at helping farmers in states like Georgia who have been hurt by other storms, in a bid for broader support for their bill.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was rumored to be considering a vote in the middle of March on that package, which if passed could have spared about half the program beneficiaries on the island from cuts. Instead, Congress spent the week consumed in a debate over a vote to disapprove of Trump’s emergency declaration for a border wall. It adjourned for an additional week without resolving the emergency relief package.

Congressional negotiators also remained divided on the exact contours of the funding bill, with Perdue’s bill costing $13.5 billion and Senate Democrats seeing more than $14 billion, including some additional measures to help Puerto Rico that Senate Republicans do not believe Trump will support. Negotiations remained ongoing and unresolved as of late Friday night, but is expected to vote to begin debate on the emergency aid package this week, according to congressional aides.

The impasse comes amid a hardening opposition by the president against extending additional aid to Puerto Rico. Trump sees the island as fundamentally broken and has told advisers that no amount of money will ever fix its systemic problems.

He describes in meetings that large swaths of the island never had power to begin with and that it is “ridiculous” how much money is going to Puerto Rico in food stamp aid, according to the senior official. He has occasionally groused about how ungrateful political officials in Puerto Rico were for the administration’s help, the official said.

Trump also read a Wall Street Journal story from October and became convinced that bondholders and others were profiting off federal government aid — and grew furious. (The story describes prices on Puerto Rico’s bonds increasing after its governing fiscal board projected disaster funding would boost the island’s overall economic health.) Since then, aides have described a president who regularly brings up the island to make sure it is not getting too much money. Current and former officials say Trump often complains in meetings that Puerto Rico doesn’t even know how to spend the money the island has been allocated.