Biden official touts summer food program Texas turned down

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that months after Texas turned down millions in federal funding to feed more than 3.8 million school children over the summer, a top Biden administration official visited Houston and San Antonio this week hoping to convince state leaders to participate next year. “When kids are healthy and have the nutrition they need, they’re better prepared to learn,” Xochitl Torres Small, the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said during a stop in Houston on Monday. While the trip was meant to highlight bipartisan legislation that has expanded school lunch programs and helped supply area food banks, Torres Small said the administration still wants to see Texas join the summer meals program to help students when they are not in class.

“We certainly are hopeful that it’s something they will invest in in the future,” she said. But Texas joined with 13 other states led by Republican governors that rejected the funding over concerns that they didn’t have enough time to implement the program and that there would be administrative costs that the federal government wasn’t covering. Nebraska was originally among the holdouts, but its governor, Jim Pillen, later reversed that decision. The federal program is designed to give children $40 a month through electronic benefit transfer cards over the summer when they are not in school, to take advantage of school lunch programs. EBT cards are like prepaid debit cards. But critics of the program say it twists an initiative developed during the COVID-19 pandemic to help students on school lunch programs even when they’re not in school. Those critics argue that USDA has morphed from a temporary assistance program into essentially a year-round food stamp program. On top of that, the Biden administration has expanded eligibility for the program to more families, creating the potential for middle- and high-income families to benefit from the programs.