[ The 117th Congress has finished its work, with little to offer
American children. Lawmakers were unable to muster a deal to combine
an extension of last year’s expanded child tax credit with tax
breaks for businesses. ]
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‘I CAN’T IMAGINE WHO WOULD THINK IT’S OK TO TAKE FOOD AWAY FROM
KIDS’  
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Bryce Covert
December 27, 2022
New York Times
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_ The 117th Congress has finished its work, with little to offer
American children. Lawmakers were unable to muster a deal to combine
an extension of last year’s expanded child tax credit with tax
breaks for businesses. _

National School Lunch Week - students at Sunnyside Elementary School,
Smyrna, Delaware, October 18, 2012 (Delaware Agriculture/Flickr),

 

No one even seemed to remember that up until this summer, the nation
had given all children free meals at school.

The emergency created by the pandemic proved that we could stave off
child hunger and deprivation if the government acted. Those two
programs ensured that even during one of the most acute economic
disruptions, children had enough to eat. But we could have ended child
hunger before the crisis even began.

Long before anyone had heard of Covid, Lynnea Hawkins relied on free
school meals for her son. He lived in northern Maine with his father,
who often didn’t have enough money, and there were times when her
son called to tell her, “Mom, there’s no food in the house,” she
told me when I interviewed her for Early Learning Nation
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Knowing he would at least get breakfast and lunch at school at no cost
“took a little of the stress off.”

But it was a burden on her son, who had to hand the paperwork proving
that his family qualified to his teacher in front of all of his
classmates. Being on free school lunch was “another thing for them
to torment him with,” Ms. Hawkins said. That stigma melted away
after Congress passed legislation in early 2020 allowing the
Department of Agriculture to issue waivers giving schools the ability
to give free meals to all students, regardless of income. Suddenly,
for two years, nearly all children in America could get free school
breakfast and lunch, no matter their family’s income.

Congress twice extended
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waivers on a bipartisan basis. But then in June, at the behest of
Senator Rand Paul and Republican colleagues of his who believed
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were no longer necessary, Congress opted
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terminate them at the end of the summer, sending the country’s
schoolchildren back into classrooms without universal access to free
meals.

The rescission of this program coincided with another congressional
failure. In 2021 nearly
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no Republicans voted through a revamping and expansion of the existing
child tax credit — which meant more families qualified and they
received more money. It also arrived monthly rather than once yearly
at tax time. The extra money allowed parents to buy more food, and
more were able to keep their children fed. But it expired at the end
of last year, and lawmakers have been unable to revive it.

The result of Congress’s actions, or lack thereof, is predictable
but tragic: American children, living in one of the wealthiest nations
in human history, are going hungry.

Eleni Towns, an associate director at No Kid Hungry, has talked to
hundreds of school district leaders, nutrition program directors and
school nutrition staff members over the past year about the impact of
universal free meals. The most important result they highlighted for
her was that children finally received meals who didn’t qualify
before the pandemic because their families made too much money —
families that couldn’t afford to pay the reduced fee “but also
aren’t having adequate meals every single day,” she said.

A family of three must earn less than $29,940
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more than $42,606, it can’t get reduced-price meals, either, and
will face the full cost. “The eligibility for free school meals is
too low, and it leaves many families who need access to free school
meals out,” Crystal FitzSimons, the director of school and
out-of-school time programs at the Food Research & Action Center, told
me. Before the pandemic, more than 20 percent
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families with children who were food insecure didn’t qualify for
free or reduced-price meals.

Including these children in school meals “has been huge and
meaningful,” Ms. Towns said. In a survey of 62 large school
districts, 95 percent
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universal free meals had reduced student hunger. “One of the easiest
things to do is to feed any child who asks for a meal,” Ms.
FitzSimons said. “It reduces paperwork and administration and
ensures kids are getting access to meals.”

“We’ve had this strange test case within the context of the
pandemic,” Ms. Towns said. “We’ve shown that it works.”

Now with the universal program gone, parents are back to applying for
free or reduced-price meals, and many struggle with the paperwork,
forget, refuse because of the stigma or simply don’t know they have
to apply, especially if their children started school when the
requirement was waived. Soon after school started, Ms. Towns was
already hearing from districts that were seeing enrollment drop.

Schools are also now back in the business of adjudicating which
families qualify for free meals and which ones have to pay reduced or
full price. Doing outreach to parents and working through all of that
paperwork consumes significant resources. Some families also can’t
afford to or forget to pay what they owe, racking up school lunch
debts that weigh on districts and can deny their children meals. In
late September, Ms. FitzSimons said, her organization had already
started hearing that the debt was piling up.

The loss of free meals hit the same year that the expanded child tax
credit disappeared. Under 2021’s expanded version, qualifying
families received $300 a month for children under age 6 and $250 a
month for older ones, and the credit was made fully refundable so that
low-income families with little to no earnings also got it. While the
money was used for many things, food was consistently
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top category.

The ensuing impact on hunger was profound. As soon as the first
payments went out, food insufficiency for adults with children in
their households dropped
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percentage points. There was no similar change for those without
children who didn’t get the money. The payments reduced food
insufficiency for families with children by 19 percent
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Monthly child poverty was reduced by 30 percent
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But those payments ended a year ago. The child poverty rate shot up
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between December 2021 and January 2022, rising 41 percent and reaching
the highest rate since the end of 2020. Food hardship for families
with children rose by as much as 12.5 percent
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Despite millions of people losing their employment and income in the
pandemic, food insecurity managed to stay steady
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2020 and 2021. Food hardship for families with children actually fell
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year. “When we have investments in the right programs at the right
time, we can cut down, and we can end child hunger,” Ms. Towns said.
“Right now, unfortunately, we’re taking away all of those benefits
that have proven to work.”

The value of preventing children from starving should be clear in and
of itself. But there’s plenty of research proving that it’s one of
the best investments we can make. School meals have been
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improve students’ school attendance rates, their behavior and their
academic achievement. Kids who don’t get adequate meals are more
likely to get stomachaches and headaches, interrupting their learning.
Giving families more money when their children are young, along the
lines of the expanded child tax credit, has been linked
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everything from fewer infant deaths to higher graduation rates to more
employment and higher incomes later in life.

Congressional lawmakers were unable to craft a deal to reinstate the
expanded child tax credit before the end of the year, leaving to go
home for the holidays without offering hungry children relief. It
should be a top bipartisan priority when they convene next year.
Bipartisan action can be hard to muster, but there are some
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legislators
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support a bigger credit. America’s children are waiting.

Reinstating universal free school meals is not on Congress’s radar.
But states are taking up the fight. Lawmakers in California
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universal free school meals permanent, and in November voters passed a
ballot measure doing the same in Colorado
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them for a year. When Congress is ready to listen, these states will
help make the case that all children deserve free meals at school.

Ms. Hawkins, the mother in Maine, is among the lucky few. She has
neighbors who have incomes that would have put them just dollars above
the free meal limit. Thanks to their state lawmakers, they can still
count on no-cost school meals for all of their children. But she knows
what it’s like to go hungry and to feel the stress of not having
enough food to feed her son.

“I can’t imagine who would think it’s OK to take food away from
kids,” she said.

_[BRYCE COVERT (@brycecovert
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is a journalist who focuses on the economy, with an emphasis on
policies that affect workers and families.]_

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* Child Tax Credit
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* children
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* school lunch program
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* Child Poverty
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* poverty
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* COVID-19
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* coronavirus
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* pandemics
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* GOP
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* Republican Party
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* Congress
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* Rand Paul
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* Evil
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