Once the government resumes operations, most states will receive the funds to distribute the benefits “within 24 hours,” USDA spokesman Alec Varsamis said in a statement issued Wednesday, as reported by Politico.

Benefits are loaded onto Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, which are debit cards issued by the Department of Agriculture.

For the first time since its inception in 1939, the U.S. government did not distribute monthly food assistance in November due to the government shutdown. The food stamp program was officially renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2008. In recent weeks, the SNAP program has been embroiled in a series of legal issues and funding cuts due to stalled negotiations over the government budget in Congress. The payment process has become confusing because 16 states have issued full benefits for November, while 13 others have sent partial payments, and still others have not made any payments, according to an investigation by the Center for Food Research and Action. “States that did not issue full benefits earlier will need to resubmit their files to their EBT providers for processing, which may take a few additional days,” Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Center for Food Research and Action, told CBS News.