​WASHINGTON — A funding lapse for food stamps, set to hit next week, became a new focus for Democrats on Wednesday as the partial government shutdown enters its fifth week with no resolution in sight.

In a rare diversion from their single-minded focus on extending expiring health insurance subsidies, Senate Democrats introduced legislation to continue funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, during the shutdown.

And in a series of news conferences, they accused the Trump administration of “weaponizing hunger” by refusing to tap a contingency fund to pay SNAP benefits for more than 41 million Americans who depend on food assistance.

“The Republicans have been on a crusade against SNAP all year,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “They slashed it by $200 billion this summer to pay for their tax cuts for billionaires. So they’ve never wanted SNAP, and they don’t want it now. Again, they’re using these 40 million innocent people as pawns.”

Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., introduced a bill that would fund both SNAP and the related Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, while also ensuring that states would be reimbursed for costs incurred for administering SNAP and WIC during the shutdown.

Democrats seized on the issue after the Trump administration reversed its stance on a plan for covering the cost of the SNAP benefits. The Agriculture Department’s initial shutdown plan indicated that the USDA’s contingency fund, which Democrats and outside groups say contains more than $5 billion, could be used to fund food stamps during the shutdown.

But the agency reversed course last week and deleted that plan from its website, saying it couldn’t tap into the funding to pay food benefits after all.

“It’s bullshit. I’ll say it,” Luján said at a news conference in describing the administration’s reversal. “I come from a small farm. I know the difference (between) good soil and the bullshit that goes in it, and this is the bullshit.”

But Republicans didn’t budge. The normally mild-mannered Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., appeared exasperated on the Senate floor Wednesday when he blocked Luján’s request for unanimous consent to take up his bill. “You know what Democrats are doing here? They’re making plans to keep the shutdown going,” he said, accusing Democrats of trying to make the shutdown more palatable as they fight for health subsidies.

“It’s going to get ugly fast,” he told reporters afterward. “And so (Democrats are) looking for an off-ramp. And the problem is that just extends the shutdown, because you take the painful issues that more Americans care about, and pretty soon you’re in a shutdown that’s into another two, three weeks, and I don’t think that’s good for anybody.”

Republicans have sought to pass a short-term continuing resolution to end the shutdown, but Democrats have blocked it 13 times, saying the unaddressed expiration of health subsidies at year’s end would send premiums soaring.

Schumer also said Democrats would rally behind a competing SNAP funding bill sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that already has bipartisan co-sponsors.

However, a floor vote on that legislation doesn’t appear likely. That’s because Republican leaders have soured on a piecemeal approach to relieve some of the pain that’s being felt as the shutdown drags on, as they see such votes as also providing Democrats with cover.

Republicans initially seemed open to so-called rifle-shot bills, having held a floor vote on a bill from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., aimed at paying government employees who are still working through the shutdown without pay. But just days later, their interest in those kinds of efforts dwindled, and Thune said Wednesday that his party won’t “pick winners and losers.”

Further complicating matters, however, the House has been out of session for a month. Even if the bill did get a Senate vote, the House would have to return to send the measure to President Donald Trump’s desk.

“I would prefer that they open the government and pay everybody,” Hawley said. “But I do think it’s important that we not allow the needy to go hungry this weekend, so I hope we can do something on that.”

Officials from more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday seeking to compel the Agriculture Department and Office of Management and Budget to release some or all of the reserve funds.

Democrats, meanwhile, defended their pivot from health insurance to SNAP funding.

“It shows that people want both,” said Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who was an early co-sponsor of Hawley’s bill. “Our fight, our commitment, is to preserve health care for people who have it, but we don’t want folks who need nutrition to lose it.”

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(Olivia M. Bridges contributed to this report.) ​

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