The Biden administration recently announced that they were expanding their food program to children and hope to feed at least 34 million kids this summer.
He’s proposing this in order to battle the food insecurity and child poverty that exists in America, wanting to provide about $375 a week for kids who are out of school in the summer and depend on the school for their meals.
Since summer is roughly about 3 months, broken down into 10 weeks, he plans to distribute the $375 weekly in order to have enough food to eat.
This is included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that was approved back in March 2021.
Tom Vilsack, agriculture secretary, comments on the food expansion and says that it’s a “game changing intervention to reduce child hunger in the United States.”
For children who are under 6, they are eligible to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits if they qualify – which gives them free or reduced priced lunch.
Parents will receive a card that are titled as P-EBT cards, and will receive them in the mail from state agencies. The Congress has funded this program for the upcoming summer and next summer as well, but Biden wants this plan to keep going until 2025.
Stacy Dean, the deputy who is under the secretary of agriculture for food, nutrition and consumer services, tells NBC News that “Congress expanded this program to operate during the summer, which I think was just highly responsive to what we need right now.”
“We know that summer hunger is a problem in normal years, but obviously this year, with heightened food hardship as a result of the pandemic, we’re happy to deploy the program this summer.”
With the pandemic going on, childhood poverty in America increased to a 21.4 per cent, based on the statistics of Columbia University’s Center on Poverty & Social Policy.
There is an estimate amount of 17 million children who struggle with hunger in America, which is 6 million more children starving that the regular amount.
The American Rescue Plan that Biden is trying to provide in the future involves SNAP benefits, unemployment benefits, family and child care tax credits, and direct cash payments that will come through as stimulus checks like those being distributed before.
By having this plan, they can try to cut childhood poverty rates by at least half of its original amount.
Jill Biden is also an advocate for the children and their struggles during the pandemic, selling benefits of the president’s package.