You may already know that 15 US governors rejected federal funds available for families who qualify for free school lunches that would provide $120 per child per month through the summer. If you forgot, I get it—your cruelty/stupidity quotient may have reached capacity, and your brain simply couldn’t accommodate one more item.
But let me ask: if you were governor, could you reject food money for kids, explaining that you opposed “feeding a welfare system with food at home?” Well then you won’t be the governor of Nebraska.
Or, could you turn down the food-for-kids money because “An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic?” OK. You can’t be governor of Iowa either.
During the pandemic a federal program that offered a monthly payment to low income families in addition to the child tax credit lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty; reduced child poverty by 30 percent; and helped food insufficiency rates among households with children drop by 26 percent.
That’s over, and hunger in this prosperous country is on the rise—by choice not chance. Pandemic aid programs have ended or are winding down, food costs are rising, and in 2022 food insecurity rates increased, with 17.3 percent of households with children lacking enough food, up from 12.5 percent in 2021 according to the USDA.
If you have a roof over your head and food to eat, good. But recognize that you’re living day-by-day in the USA: Unnecessary Savagery and Abuse.
Bill Ayers 