Opinion | Republicans oppose food aid for children


18 months since the Supreme Court decision Dobbs The decision gave Republican officials ample opportunity to prove that they were not only anti-abortion opponents, but advocates for children. They keep failing.

Republican politicians across the country have found new and creative ways to deprive struggling parents and children of resources. For example, consider your summer lunch program.

Under a new federal program, children eligible for free or reduced-price school meals can also receive food assistance during the summer. The policy, created as part of the 2022 bipartisan budget deal, would give eligible families $40 per child per month, or $120 total in the summer. Essentially acting as a supplement to food stamps, these families are forced to buy more food when classes are canceled and children no longer have access to nutritious school meals. There are many. (This is similar to the temporary programs offered during the pandemic, but far less generous.)

The federal government will pay all of the benefits and half of the administrative costs associated with this new food program. However, the program is not automatic. States had until January 1 to agree.

As my Post colleague Annie Gowen reported, Republican governors in 15 states have chosen not to do so. As a result, up to 10 million children will be denied access to this food aid.

Why did these governors deny food aid, even though they promised to help families struggling with rising food prices and inflation?

Some states, including Texas and Vermont, said it would be operationally or financially difficult to get new systems up and running this summer. These obstacles can probably be overcome in the next few years. In other states, Republican politicians expressed open disdain for the program.

For example, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen said of the new program, “I don’t believe in welfare.” A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Children and Families cited vague and unspecified concerns about “federal government bondage.”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds suggested it makes no sense to give this food aid to food-insecure children “in the context of the childhood obesity epidemic.”

Reynolds apparently doesn’t know that obesity is associated with a lack of reliable access to nutritious food, and that children in food-insecure households are at higher risk for developmental problems. It seems so. This suggests that withholding this nutritional support will not only negatively impact the state’s children today, but also the state’s workforce tomorrow.

This isn’t the first time Republican politicians have taken food out of the mouths of hungry children and their mothers.

For a quarter of a century, Congress has fully funded the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC, which provides food assistance to low-income households determined to be at nutritional risk. There has been bipartisan agreement to do so. “Fully funded” means the program has sufficient funding to prevent eligible applicants from being rejected.

That consensus shattered last year when Republican lawmakers drafted a bill that would eliminate or reduce benefits for 5.3 million children and pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding adults.

Thankfully, that bill did not pass. But the Republican-controlled House has yet to agree on broad numbers for government spending by next week’s deadline, raising the possibility of new stopgap legislation extending existing funding levels. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that food costs and program participation rates are rising so rapidly that keeping funding flat would leave millions of hungry infants and millions of pregnant and postpartum children vulnerable. This would result in adults being denied participation.

Elsewhere in the ongoing fight over the federal budget, Democratic lawmakers are pleading with Republicans to consider expanding the child tax credit to make it more eligible for poor children.

The last time Congress passed such an expansion in 2021 (with only Democratic votes), the program was a stunning success, cutting child poverty by nearly half. However, the expansion was temporary. When this deadline expired, child poverty doubled to pre-pandemic levels.

Several Republicans, such as retired Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, have heroically supported restoring some form of child support, even for poor children. But other members of the party are mostly somewhere between indifferent and hostile to the idea, preferring instead to expand tax cuts for businesses.

In fact, if an expanded version of the child tax credit does eventually materialize, it may happen in the coming days, but it’s unlikely that Democrats will be willing to make these corporate tax cuts available in exchange for aid to poor children. It would only come true because he was taken hostage by the.

The American people need to know that the Republican Party is really serious about helping women who are forced to have children, even if they are not financially or emotionally ready to do so. continues to guarantee. They claim they want to protect young people and invest in their economic futures.

It’s time for Republicans to put their money where their mouth is.



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