Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Once again, the Republican Party is showing that they really don’t care about children. For all their talk about family values — empty and self-righteous talk at that — red states only care about children as pawns in their cruel expression of power.
Fifteen states, all led by Republican governors, have rejected federal money for a summer lunch program. Congress approved a food assistance program designed to assist low-income families during the summers, with $120 for each child to purchase food when school lunches are unavailable. While 35 states, five territories and tribal nations have opted into the program, 15 states — Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming — declined the offer.
All of these states are GOP-controlled, which is not accidental or by chance, a fact that we will explore later. (To be fair, Louisiana, which is currently Republican-led, opted out of the funds when a Democrat was governor.) Roughly half of these states are former confederate states with large Black populations, a long record of treating people poorly and a history of not regarding Black people as human beings.
This federal program provides $2.5 billion to around 21 million children who would receive free or reduced-cost lunch in school. And yet, these red states are knowingly and willfully depriving the children of their states the opportunity to keep their bellies full and keep from starving in the summer months.
This stance on the part of Republican governors is the ultimate in cruelty, a hatred of government programs to help people and a cold-hearted and cold-blooded demonization of the poor. “COVID-19 is over and Nebraska taxpayers expect that pandemic-era government relief programs will end too,” said…
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