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.
She says it costs $2.2 million to feed them kids, with the federal government covering the other $2.2 million.
Let’s set aside that Iowa has an FY24 spending budget of $8.5 billion, out of which $2.2 million is basically nothing…
Rather, let’s make this a 🅲🆄🅻🆃🆄🆁🅴 🆆🅰🆁 🅸🆂🆂🆄🅴! Parental rights, right? That thing where parents can uncritically direct “the care, custody, and control of their minor children.” It sanctifies the views of parents, elevating them over government intrusion. If a federal program provides $40 a month to each child in a low-income family to help with food costs via an EBT card, then, presumably, those parents are making the best choices for their children.
Right?
Not so! says Kim Reynolds. Low-income families are too stupid, she implies, not to give their kids nutritious foods when childhood obesity has become an epidemic. By not participating the federal program then, Reynolds is ostensibly protecting children. But really, her non-participation undermines sanctified parental choices in Iowa to provide for their kids.
And who is she to supersede parental rights? A Republican governor.
Just tell them if more poor kids survive until adulthood there’s more cheap workforce around.
The kids generally survive anyway, just with stunted cognitive growth…which helps maintain a cheap
underclassworkforce.And full prison system.
Feed a kid instant ramen for all their meals -> iron deficiency -> behavioral problems. Believe a poor kid like this was featured in A Place at the Table (2012), or a similar documentary. An example who opened my eyes to the fact that… well, it’s not bad to consider thinking kindly, even when it seems like an adult just sucks.
Remind me of this old Babylon 5 scene.
That was fucking awesome. If this were reddit, I’d give you a silver.
Yeah… but if you feed those kids they’ll just expect government handouts for the rest of their life. What do you just expect the government to give them money when they’re old or something? You have to save for retirement!
Now where’s my social security check?
I guess she’d rather they just starve…
Of course, what this is really all about is a refusal to pay taxes.
As a lifelong Iowan I am ashamed that we continue to employ this woman. Paying her a salary is not sustainable for Iowa, she is holding back this great state from so much potential it’s enraging.
She is continually undermining our health (can’t have high COVID numbers if we stop reporting it), and stripping away at our public schools (voucher program for private schools).
I may be just a transplant but I don’t think I can get anymore pissed at this person. Can’t believe she won the reelection.
She added, “If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state’s needs.”
In the same speech she talks about how kids don’t need money for food and conflates issues of hunger and obesity. I do not trust your “states rights” bs to actually feed children. That money will absolutely go into a donors pocket of not strictly allocated (which is exactly why they don’t want to be told how to spend it).
Just like the COVID funds she mis-spent and had to return.
Iowa forces women to have children against their will, then denies them the resources needed to raise them. This means unwanted, unafforded children, born to suffer. They pretend this is a good deed. Monsters.
The idea is to make people who have sex suffer. That way they can point to them as an example of why you shouldn’t “sin”.
They claim it’s the will of their lord and savior who literally preaches the opposite and the brainless just eat that shit up without a second thought.
A real easy way to tell good people from bad… the bad ones make claims that they are doing the will of god. No good person needs to say that
Iowa has a budget of $8.5B. This program has about 93k eligible families in the state. At $40 per month, assuming 3 months for summer, the total cost is about $11M. Or 0.10% of their state budget. It’s a rounding error…
The suffering is the point.
“Let them eat cake”
-Jesus
“The cake is my body. Enjoy”
Also Jesus
“Start with my cake.” -Thick Jesus
“My hips are a lie”
Anti-Shakira Jesus
The power is the point. The suffering is just something that doesn’t bother them.
I’d say you’re both right. Power exists in a relative scale, if there is nobody below you to coerce then there is no power. The causing of suffering is an expression of power, it’s a way of saying “I am entitled to a life without suffering, you are not”.
It’s not even Iowa money, it’s a federal subsidy right?
Who does this clown think she’s saving money for? The federal budget doesn’t truly exist, we just use numbers for fun.
She added, “If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state’s needs.”
They’re upset because the federal cash goes directly to the needy families. They want it to pass through them first so they can skim most of it off the top.
Iowa’s cost would only be $2.2M for admin fees.
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The people who claim to be the most christ-like are usually the least christ-like.
Jesus was a brown socialist undocumented immigrant
We just want to make sure that they’re out. They’re at church camps. They’re at schools. They’re at 4-H. And we’ll take care of them at all of the places that they’re at, so that they’re out amongst (other people) and not feeding a welfare system with food at home,” Pillen said.
Nebraskan gov is a piece of shit too. Only wants to help the children if they get sent to indoctrination camps. Fucking trash. They’re not even pretending to be human.
Why, there are no children at the 4-H club either!
Am I so out of touch!?
…
No
It is the children who are wrong
All those examples are non-government, and do not last the entire summer
Exactly. The whole Conservative ethos is “government bad”(unless is our government). They want kids in programs that are almost all religious indoctrination programs.
I wish the media wouldn’t give politicians that say ‘x costs too much’ a free pass. Often, not doing x can cost more than doing it and rhetorically hiding behind ‘it costs something’ leaves the reader to assume it’s reasonable to not do x because of cost.
For example, it costs something to put a homeless person in an apartment and give them time with a social worker- and the alternative to doing that (which involves paying cops to move them around and destroy their stuff, to investigate the crimes homeless people are perpetrators and victims of, to process them in and out of local emergency rooms, etc) costs substantially more than putting them in housing.
If feeding kids at a rate of $40/month is too expensive, what is the cost of not feeding them? (There’s the expenses of being sick, of acting out and involving disciplinary action or just taking class time, and let’s not forget that opportunity cost from not developing kids to their potential if they aren’t getting proper nutrition) It’s well-understood that nutritional poverty involves foregoing brain development to a child’s full potential, and that in turn costs society whatever capacity that kid doesn’t get to fulfill as a consequence. Not feeding kids is a way to keep your country under-performing and given the GOP’s politics I honestly think they need that in their voters.
it aligns with the republican way of governing… “not my problem. let the next person/generation deal with it”
I agree with you, but the elite capitalist counterpoint is that they want to keep many people poor and uneducated. They are then less powerful fighting for more rights and demanding more, and because they’re desperate they’re willing to work for less money. See also restricting abortion = a bigger cheap labor pool. Your point of view is caring for people, theirs is caring for profits.
40/month
This is a summer program, so specifying costed month is probably misleading
We will never get better than this, think about it. It’s been years and years of seeing this same shit over and over. Iowa chose this out of touch POS for themselves and they will continue to.
Reynolds is the least popular governor in the country. Her first election she only won by .1%. Her landslide victory this last election was mostly due to no one showing up to vote.
There are a LOT of people in Iowa who didn’t choose her and never would.
I don’t think they should get off the hook so easily. By choosing not to vote, they made thier choice.
The choice was made for them. There was no primary, only one Democrat even ran, and she had some significant problems fundraising. Even if every person that voted in the previous rejection voted for the Democrat, Reynolds still would have won, albeit by a much slimmer margin.
Even if every person that voted in the previous rejection voted for the Democrat
Republicans were prohibited from voting for a Democrat in the general election?
They chose her instead of a Democrat. That’s completely their fault.
I’m specifically talking about the roughly 45% of the state that you’ve condemned to suffer for the crime of living in a state that has a few more Republicans than Democrats.
Oh but it’s sustainable to give billionaires and corporations tax cuts? It’s sustainable to own multiple million dollar plus homes? Allowing private jets is sustainable? An entire economy devoted to weapons manufacturing in a country of starving, struggling workers is sustainable?
These fucking boomers never progressed beyond their teenage years. I can’t help but see our leadership as highschool students that need to grow the fuck up, abandon their awful, failed special interest policies, and start doing their fucking job; which is providing the average person with the means to live a fulfilled life. Every. Single. Politician. Is an abject failure that should have been cast to the wolves decades ago.
Billionaires and corporations have value because they can afford to bribe politicians. Poor, starving children don’t. Simple as that in their eyes.
Fuck her. What an absolute joke. I know I’m not adding anything of value to this conversation, but I’m just so mad.
This is an argument that is used all the time in politics and business when a (partial) solution to a big problem is presented.
“Well there may be unintended consequences to this solution so we can’t do anything until every single potential problem that may arise sometime in the future is completely worked through and solved.”
I mean if you are going into space then that is probably the way to do things but trying to solve childhood hunger? Yea you got time to fix the problems as they arise.
Republicans only understand the politics of cruelty these days.
Letting billionaires live is not sustainable
Jesus: “Then go broke.”
Well put
