Beginning Friday, Alaskans on food stamps, like their counterparts across the nation, will see a 5% cut to their SNAP, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, allotment, meaning less healthy food for their tables.

The cut will affect 94,000 people in the state of Alaska as the additional monies, that were added to the program by the 2009 stimulus package, ends with the expiration of the package on November 1 as congress fails to put into place an increase to take the place of it.

The Food Bank of Alaska as well as other food pantries, who are already under a tremendous strain with increased use of their program, will be pushed even harder to provide healthy food for families as the cuts take effect today. Many people enrolled in the SNAP program utilize pantries throughout the state to suppliment the food funds in an effort to keep food on their tables.

The cuts food stamp recipients see today may only be a precursor to things to come as congress looks at the SNAP program and work to make further cuts as well as attempt to put requirements in place that will take thousands of people with no children in their homes and no job completely off the rolls.

Republican House members in Washington have already approved a further $40 billion cut to the program spread out over ten years, all the while saying that their intentions are not to target the nation’s most vulnerable, but an attempt to get more of the recipients back into the workforce. The Republican House pushed through this second food stamp bill after the first bill failed because Republican House members felt that the proposed $20.5 billion cuts to the program were not enough.

This poses a dilemma in Alaska where much of the work in the state is seasonal, and is virtually non-existant in the winter months in the rural areas of the state.

These further cuts, proposed and passed by the House Republicans, don’t have a chance of passing the Senate according to the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. She said shortly after the House vote on the controversial bill, “We have never before seen this kind of partisanship injected into a Farm Bill,” she said in a statement. “Not only does this House bill represent a shameful attempt to kick millions of families in need off of food assistance, it’s also a monumental waste of time. The bill will never pass the Senate, and will never be signed by the President.”

But, the present cuts, beginning today, will come in to play nontheless, and will remain in place until Congress votes to replace the benefits through other means.