Hunter
08/16/24
Governor Kim Reynolds wants to reject the use of the federal Summer EBT program next year and instead use the funds earmarked for Iowa to expand on her program that provides food sites for children across the state.
The deadline to apply for the funding was Thursday. This summer, The Reynolds administration rejected $29 million in funding that would have provided $40 per month per child directly using an EBT card. Instead, the governor used $900,000 in federal pandemic relief funding to expand the number of healthy food sites across the state. Food advocates argued that the program did nothing to help children in rural areas or those that didn’t have the resources to travel to the sites.
The Gazette reports the Reynolds administration projects the new state proposal would feed 60,000 more Iowa children than the Summer EBT program and provide healthier foods. The governor claimed when she rejected the funding last year that the federal funding did nothing to promote healthy nutrition at a time when childhood obesity is rising.
Iowa Hunger Coalition board chair Luke Elzinga has pushed back on that assertion, saying that low-income families with more money to spend on groceries typically purchase nutritious food. The USDA also criticized the plan, saying in a statement, “The governor is asserting that the State knows better than its own families do about what their needs are.”