In the first plank of an election-year policy agenda, Speaker Paul Ryan said congressional Republicans “are producing reforms in federal policies that will give states, schools and local providers the flexibility they need to provide children access to healthy meals.”
The anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center said that by “flexibility,” Ryan meant converting school-food programs into a block grant for states to run as they choose.
The 35-page paper on “poverty, opportunity and upward mobility” was the first of six pieces of a policy package called “A Better Way.” It focused on welfare and job-training programs and touched lightly on food-assistance programs with few specifics.
On school nutrition, it said, “Republican reforms incorporate ideas like seeking out better ways to run these programs, consolidating and streamlining where possible, and providing greater authority to states to meet the unique needs in each of their communities.”
A Republican-drafted bill awaiting a floor vote in the House would award school-nutrition block grants to three states which would decide which students are eligible and how many meals to serve. The bill also tightens use of “community eligibility,” to provide free meals to all students in a poor neighborhood, and devotes the savings to a higher reimbursement rate for school breakfast.
“It would weaken federal school meal nutrition standards, reduce access to free school meals for low-income students in many areas while raising school administrative burdens and costs, and begin moving school meal programs toward a block grant,” said Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In addition, the Republican paper deplored “an increasing number” of food-stamp recipients who are able-bodied adults without dependents, now generally limited to 90 days of benefits in a three-year period. “Insist on work for work-capable adults,” it said. “Part of our effort to reform the welfare system includes identifying policies that prevent or discourage working-age people from obtaining or preparing for work.” Critics say a work requirement would be harmful during periods of high unemployment or slow job growth, such as the slow recovery from the 2008-09 recession.