FRAC Chat

Across the U.S., more than 40 million Americans live in households that struggle against hunger, with poverty and racial inequities often being root causes. FRAC recently spoke with Dr. Kofi Essel, Community Pediatrician, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and Health Equity & Hunger Champion at Children’s National Health System and the George Washington School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., about the importance of looking at and addressing hunger through a racial and economic lens.

So, we should be doing more for our kids, not less. That’s why the Trump administration’s most recent effort to change the rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is wrong and cruel. It would gut broad-based categorical eligibility, which would take basic food assistance away from working families, seniors, and people with disabilities, and make it harder for struggling people to feed their families. That also would jeopardize 500,000 kids’ access to their free breakfast and lunch at school. In other words, President Trump is literally advocating that we take food out of the mouths of our children. 

The Trump administration recently proposed a rule to gut states’ option to use broad-based categorical eligibility (Cat El) for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). If adopted, the rule would eliminate SNAP benefits for 3.1 million people, and jeopardize more than 500,000 children’s access to free school breakfast and lunch. Broad-based categorical eligibility allows more families that get services funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program to qualify for SNAP benefits if their net incomes are at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty line.

August 6 marks the anniversary of the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), a triumph of the Civil Rights era that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Now in its 54th year, the efficacy of the Act is in peril.

In the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization, Congress has the opportunity to expand — substantially — children’s access to summer meals. Here are five strategies Congress can employ to strengthen and improve children’s access to the Summer Nutrition Programs.