Iowa will not participate this summer in a federal program that gives $40 per month to each child in a low-income family to help with food costs while school is out, state officials have announced.
The state has notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture that it will not participate in the 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children — or Summer EBT — program, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Education said in a Friday news release.
“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,” Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in the news release.
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A bipartisan group of Nebraska lawmakers have urged the state to reconsider, saying Summer EBT would address the needs of vulnerable children and benefit the state economically, the Journal Star reported.
Wouldn’t “schools and their kitchens/cafeterias existing” count as existing programs and infrastructure?
In theory, sure.
In practice, the GOP has made it a core issue to defund schools and remove free and subsidized lunches, so it’s unlikely that any money given to the governor’s administration would go towards anything of the sort.