President Obama will ask Congress for a long-term expansion of the summer food program so it reaches every child – roughly 22 million at latest count – who gets lunch for free or at reduced price during the school year, the White House announced. At present, only one in six of those low-income schoolchildren is covered by the summer food program.
The administration budget for fiscal 2017, beginning on Oct. 1, will propose a gradual build-up in participation over 10 years, beginning with an additional 1 million children. The cost over the coming decade would be $12 billion. The proposal would amount to a parting request by Obama, who leaves office in 2017, to a Republican-controlled Congress focused on spending controls.
As part of a White House-hosted “conversation” about child hunger, the administration also announced a pilot project to allow states to certify children for free or reduced meals at school if their families are covered by Medicaid. So-called direct certification already is approved for households that are enrolled in food stamps or welfare programs. USDA, which runs school food programs, will seek five states to begin the project in the new school year and build to 20 states over the next three years.
The summer food expansion would include establishment of more sites that serve meals and provision of an EBT card that families could use only to buy food from grocers. The child nutrition bill approved by the Senate Agriculture Committee last week would allow states to issue summer food benefits via EBT cards. “We appreciate the indication by the Senate Agriculture Committee that is program is worthy of expansion,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during the White House conference.
“We think the time has come for us to commit as a country to a long-term commitment so that not just 3.8 million kids but … all 20, 21 million kids who are free and reduced- (price meal recipients) have access to a summer meal program,” said Vilsack.
“We believe that over the course of the next several years that we can gradually increase the number of youngsters and families that are covered under this program so that at the end of the 10-year period, 100 percent of the kids would have access either to a congregate meal site or an EBT card that their parents can use to access additional resources.”
Vilsack said the proposal was for EBT cards worth $45 a month and indexed for inflation.
The anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center applauded the administration proposals. The Summer EBT card “will ensure millions of low-income children who benefit from school meals continue to have access to the food their bodies need during the summer months.” FRAC said it has called for years for use of Medicaid data to bring children into school food programs without the paperwork burden for families to fill out separate applications and for schools to process them. Direct certification is promoted as a way to reduce error rates in running the food programs.
“We’ve seen in five to seven states it (use of Medicaid data) has resulted in an increase,” said Vilsack. “In New York City, for example, a seven percent increase in the number of kids who were covered.”