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.

  • @RusticusEnglish
    100•11 months ago

    Meanwhile farmers in Iowa get the majority of their income off the fat teat of the US government. Go fuck yourself hypocrites.

    • @littlewonder
      2•11 months ago

      Farming subsidies are insane in Iowa but because so much of the farming is owned by giant corporations instead of families, it’s just another way we move money from taxpayers to the wealthy.

      It pisses me off to no end that rural Iowans go hard Republican. They listen to the pandering to “Iowa Farmers” from the right, despite only larping as farmers since they all sold their farms in the 70s and 80s.

      Sorry, Tom the “farmer”, but living in a ranch house on .25 acres in a town of 200 people and wearing coveralls from 35 years ago, does not make you the beneficiary of Iowa farm money.