Parents in 35 states will be able to breathe a little easier this summer when it comes to feeding their children. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on Wednesday that children in those states, along with all U.S. territories and four Native American tribes, will benefit from a federal program that will dole out food assistance to low-income families while school is out.
But 15 Republican governors chose not to sign up for the program, which would provide up to $120 per school-age child for each month of summer, supplementing the free or reduced-price lunches they receive during the school year. The governors’ choice will leave an estimated 8 million children less certain that there will be enough for them to eat each day. There’s something particularly cruel about a decision to willfully deprive millions of parents the comfort of knowing that their child won’t go to bed hungry.
There’s something particularly cruel about a decision to willfully deprive millions of parents the comfort of knowing that their child won’t go to bed hungry.
The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer for Children, or Summer EBT, is an outgrowth of a food security program launched during the Covid-19 pandemic. The bipartisan budget deal struck in 2022 made the program permanent, providing funding for parents with incomes below the federal poverty line to receive $40 per month for each kid in school. The USDA said on Wednesday that it estimates that the program will “serve close to 21 million children, providing a total of nearly $2.5 billion in grocery benefits” starting in June.
This kind of policy should seem like a slam-dunk for any state politician. Summer EBT is fully federally funded, requires no buy-in from state governments, and augments other assistance like summer meal programs and private food banks. Yet the GOP-led administrations in Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Their varying reasons for rejecting the funding, as reported by The Washington Post, are even more baffling:
The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.” Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”
That’s definitely one way to frame keeping money out of the pockets of parents struggling to make ends meet. Contrary to Republicans’ dismissiveness, food insecurity rates have risen as pandemic-era programs have ended, according to the USDA. Roughly 17 million families faced food insecurity at some point in 2022, 3.5 million more than in 2021.
The data for 2023 has yet to be compiled and released, but 2024 is shaping up to have an even sharper uptick in hunger if Congress doesn’t act soon. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children — better known as WIC — faces a funding shortfall as more families sign up for the aid program. A short-term federal spending bill that passed in November provided $6 billion in WIC funding for the year, but a report from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities last month warned that the USDA might still be more than $1 billion short.
As food prices spiked last year, WIC participation grew to over 6.6 million mothers and young children. The New York Times reports that without an infusion of funding from Congress, states will likely only have enough money to provide full benefits through the end of March to the more than half of infants in the U.S. that receive them. After that, states may be forced to add parents to a waiting list for benefits for the first time in 30 years.
Normally this would be an easy bipartisan fix. But House Republicans have insisted on major cuts to federal spending and many would prefer to keep funding for food security programs flat, at best, even as more people have clearly needed help. Some have been even eyeing rolling back an expansion of WIC benefits to pre-pandemic levels despite rising food costs.
The rejection of the Summer EBT funding and skepticism toward fully funding WIC are a perfect representation of GOP policymaking. While talk about reining in spending may sound prudent and responsible in the abstract, the result is policies that make it harder for families to raise their children. Conservatives may pride themselves on being supposedly “pro-family,” but in reality, their unwillingness to help families in need makes the Republican Party platform nothing less than pro-child hunger.
