Iowa will not participate in a federal program that gives $40 per month to each child in a low-income family over the summer to help with food costs while school is out.

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.

  • prole@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    This is a federal program. It costs them nothing

    That’s really the most fucked up thing. These are always states that already take far more from the federal government than they provide in taxes, and they complain as if they’d be the ones paying for this shit.

    As someone who’s in a state that gives far more to the US government in taxes than we take, I should have more of a say where that money goes, and I would prefer to continue giving aid to these children in Iowa. In fact, it should be more.