PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER OP-ED: Our region’s children have returned to school, and Congress has resumed its work in Washington. One important item on its to-do list is Child Nutrition reauthorization, which governs Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); school meals; after-school and summer feeding programs; nutrition education. and more. Passage should be completed by Sept. 30, when the current law expires.
But at a time when one in four kids in the country and Pennsylvania rely on food stamps to get the nutrition they need to learn and grow, Congress may end up raiding the food-stamp program to fund child nutrition. In other words, we may wind up with a child-nutrition bill that provides kids with nutritious food at lunchtime – but removes the help families need to give their kids a decent dinner.
The Senate has already taken this route. In August, it passed the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” but offset the cost of the legislation by slashing $2.2 billion from families’ food-stamp benefits, in effect robbing Peter to pay Paul. These cuts are in addition to the $11.9 billion already eliminated from the program to provide critical aid to state governments to prevent teacher layoffs and to temporarily increase the federal share of Medicaid costs… (more)
