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The Daily Signal
$12 Billion
Obama Plan Would Give Lunches to Poor Children in the Summer
Natalie Johnson
January 27, 2016
President Obama visits third- and fourth-graders during lunch period at
Viers Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring, Md. (Photo: Chip
Somodevilla/EPA/Newscom)
The Obama administration proposes to provide free lunch to millions of
children who lose access to the subsidized meals once the school year
comes to a close.
Under the program announced Wednesday, low-income families who are
eligible for free and reduced-price meals during the academic year
would receive an electronic benefits card loaded monthly with $45 per
child. The benefit would go toward groceries during the summer months
when school is closed.
The program will cost taxpayers $12 billion over 10 years if Congress
accepts the proposal in President Obama’s 2017 budget request,
scheduled to be submitted to lawmakers next month.
Rachel Sheffield, a policy analyst in welfare and education at The
Heritage Foundation, said the federal government already runs roughly a
dozen programs targeted toward providing food aid to low-income
Americans.
Those programs, Sheffield said, make up a portion of the nearly 80
welfare programs assisting low-income households through social
services, medical care, and housing. The price tag is over $1 trillion
a year.
“The measure of the welfare system’s success should not be its
expansion, but all too often expansion seems to be the goal,” Sheffield
said.
In 2010, she noted, Congress passed the Healthy and Hunger Free Kids
Act with a provision that enabled all students residing in a
high-poverty school district to qualify for free and reduced-price
lunch, regardless of the child’s individual household income.
Obama administration officials argue that the government hasn’t gone
far enough.
“The reality is, obviously, we still have millions of kids that are not
getting the help and assistance they need,” Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack said Wednesday.
The Republican-led Congress likely will be wary of the $12 billion
plan, however, particularly after the Department of Agriculture
reported last year that it had doled out nearly $2.7 billion in
“improper” payments associated with subsidized lunches during the
2012-2013 school year.
The episode led to increased scrutiny of the program by lawmakers.
Nearly 22 million children currently are enrolled in government meal
programs during the school year. But, officials say, only a sliver of
eligible students—3.8 million—receive subsidized lunches during the
summer.
The administration expects that its proposal, called the Summer
Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children, will help shrink this divide.
The program would phase in over 10 years, beginning in summer 2017. The
Department of Agriculture projects that it will capture nearly 20
million students by 2026 who aren’t currently enrolled in a government
meal program while school is out.
In its announcement, the White House touted an ongoing USDA pilot
program that concluded that summertime subsidies to low-income families
substantially reduced “food insecurity” and improved overall nutrition.
The administration also announced that the USDA would increase access
to subsidized meals for low-income students by allowing states
participating in the National School Lunch Program to use Medicaid data
so they may automatically enroll qualified students for the free or
low-cost lunches.
The current paper application process is arduous for families to
complete and expensive for schools to process, The Washington Post
reported.
“We know that the program works, and we want to expand it,” Vilsack
told the newspaper. “Many children who are eligible for free and
reduced lunch meals aren’t enrolled in the program—this is going to
help ensure that they receive the benefits, too.”
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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