This Trump plan would strip about 500,000 kids of free school lunches
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Trump administration left important information out of its latest attempt to take food aid from millions of poor people: The plan would potentially strip around 500,000 kids of free school lunches . But while the Trump administration was up-front about the 3.1 million people who would be stripped of food stamps under its plan, it didn’t bother to mention what would specifically happen to children.
Kids automatically get free school lunch if their families receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a policy that reduces paperwork and makes sure that kids aren’t deprived of food by parents who are unable to do the paperwork for one reason or another. Trump’s plan to kick 3.1 million people off of food stamps works by taking away states’ ability to adjust eligibility to account for high housing and childcare costs. That’s a way states currently can prevent families from having to choose between a roof over their heads and food on their plates—and it’s something Trump Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue called “abuse of a critical safety net system.”
Here’s what that “abuse” looks like when families are faced with the real-world choice between food and housing. “The parents start missing meals to avoid that impact on the kids. And the older kids—the ones in middle school and high school—they often will skip meals to make sure there’s food for the little ones,” Share Our Strength’s Lisa Davis told NBC News.
The eligibility restriction would have a cascade effect by taking those automatic school lunches away from kids in the families that had lost food stamps, so the kids would be hungry at home and hungry at school. That’s information the Trump administration didn’t bother to include in its formal proposal, House Democrats say. Is it because even the Trump administration knows that bragging about making kids go hungry isn’t a good look? Or because it just doesn’t think poor kids are worth a mention? Either way, the cruelty is still the point.
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This again? It is concerning TANF.
Already been there done that. Media only telling a small part of the story again.
From the same article. No one is stopping families from applying for SNAP; they just won't be automatically enrolled when they are on TANF.
Big fat nothing burger again. Seems the left doesn't care about waste/fraud nearly as much as they like to claim.
Actually I disagree with your summation. I believe it's really more party politics. The left is using this to drum up fear in order to gain votes next year. It's just more "resistance" for them.
From what I've read about the plan, this is mostly aimed at the people who have lots of money in assets to prevent them from automatically being enrolled in SNAP when they really don't deserve to have those benefits. But hey, fear brings voters...
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Another spin article that ignores actual facts like the States gaming the system to get more Federal Dollars to keep more State Employees on the payroll...
Too bad the readers are smarter than the author!
Too bad you don't really understand anything in regard to the article. [Deleted]
Do you understand the difference between automatically enrolling someone in one program just because they qualify for a different program and making people apply for the program they wish to get benefits from?
Apparently I understand it better than you did.Try understanding that the Federal Program has income requirements that determine who qualifies for free or reduced cost lunches. Some of the he States took it upon themselves to change the rules so that anyone on SNAP automatically qualified and didn't need means testing. They also decided that in certain areas, ALL students in a school were entitled to Free Lunch regardless of family income. All that has been done is that these kids parents now have to actually prove they meet the Federal Requirements for the program...something that was required from the very beginning. Now since I've heard you denounce waste and fraud on the Republican side so often, I expect the same outrage wherever such abuse is found. At least that is what we call having integrity would demand of a person anyway.
Repeat after me:
THE LUNCHES ARE NOT FREE.
If the lunches were really free then there wouldn't be need to argue over who pays for them.
The states can extend eligibility limits however they wish. But the Federal government isn't going to pay for that. State and local governments already pay about 90 pct of the cost of education so its not unreasonable to expect states to pay the cost of school lunches, too.
A school district can be as charitable as they wish. But the school district needs to pay for its own charity.