Thousands Of Children Will No Longer Get Summer Food Program

Kids enjoying lunch together

Within days of Christmas, families in Iowa and Nebraska received some troubling news. Republican Governors in those states have announced that they’re opting out of a summer Federal food assistance program. The program provides thousands of low-income families with an additional $40 per month in food assistance to cover the months when school lunch programs aren’t available.

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds said the program wasn’t sustainable and blamed the decision on her belief that the program didn’t do enough to address the obesity epidemic. “Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don’t provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families. An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” she said in a statement obtained by the Associated Press.

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Although race hasn’t been brought up in this conversation explicitly, it’s an undercurrent of any discussion over welfare. White Americans are the overall largest benefactors of welfare, but the conflict has always been incredibly racially coded. From former President Ronald Reagan decrying the mythical “welfare queen” to Senator Tim Scott implying welfare has been worse than slavery for Black people, it’s impossible to avoid the racial undertones in these conversations.

The fight against providing services and welfare in the United States has been raging for decades. And children of all races living in poverty in the Midwest appear to be the latest casualties.

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