GOP governor slashing food program for kids ahead of Christmas sparks fury

Simmumah@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 719 points –
GOP governor slashing food program for kids ahead of Christmas sparks fury
newsweek.com
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The federal 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (EBT) program, which provides low-income families with $40 per child per month to help with food costs while schools are closed...

What we should be really angry about is how shit that benefit is. $40 per month?? Really? That's like 5 days of canned food. Absolutely pathetic.

Anyone who doesn't want to feed kids is a monster. Children are not at fault for their parent's economic situation

$40 per child per month.

That's still not much, but with a little budgeting and meal planning it goes further than you'd think, if not as far as it sometimes needs to.

I've lived on not much more than that per month.

It does mean zero luxuries, and that might be the worst part of it.

So I do agree with you that it should be more. We should all have a bit more. No one should ever have to scrip and save in order to eat each month.

Every man woman and child should be guaranteed food, water, and housing as a minimum.

Okay folks you have $40 to eat on for the next 30 days, and you need as much nutrition as a growing child. What you buying?

Let me preface this by saying I agree with you and this action is absolutely repugnant. But as the mother to a kindergartener, $40 is absolutely doable. That money is to cover the breakfast and lunch they are missing from school 5 days a week. Breakfast would be a bowl of cereal or oatmeal and a piece of fruit. Lunch is PB&J or chicken nuggets, fruit cup/apple sauce, something snacky like teddygrahams or chips and a glass of milk. It's not name brand foods or varied meals, but it is survivable and depending on the kid (like mine), maybe even preferable. (My kid would be in heaven if I let him eat chicken nuggets every day.)

Yeah, point taken there, I was of course being a bit facetious in how I represented it, the $40/month is really a supplemental amount to what the legal guardian can already provide. It's just such a sad reality that there are kids with few options of their own in this world, and one of those options is being taken away because it's perceived as imperfect by the people in charge of it, with no regard for those that rely on it for things like staying alive and such.

$40 is a lot of money to stretch across 30 days, but it's peanuts for the state of Iowa to afford, compared to something like the Governor's salary, which I'm sure she thinks she deserves more than the poorest children of her state deserve a full tummy.

A single box of cereal now days typically goes for 5-9 dollars depending on what you get, then there's a gallon of milk for another 3-5. That's already a quarter of their monthly budget. $40 in current times is nothing when it comes to groceries. This is disgustingly low from the "think of the children" party.

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