Nowhere is the stark divide of inequality in this country coming into sharper relief than in the statistics on hunger that have now begun to emerge with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As observed by David Super, writing for Talking Points Memo, the pandemic has revealed the United States to be a country where “[u]pper-middle-class people joke about taking up sourdough bread-baking with spare time, while thousands of desperate people spent their night in cars lined up for blocks waiting for the San Antonio Food Bank to open.”
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported a study just published by the Hamilton Project, showing that one out of every five children under the age of 12 can now be characterized as “food insecure,” which means that his or her parents answered “often true” or “sometimes true” to one of the following two survey questions:
The food we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have enough money to get more. The children in my household were not eating enough because we just couldn’t afford enough food.According to The Times report, that means that the rate of hunger among younger children since the onset of the COVID-19 is already triple the food insecurity experienced at the peak of the Great Recession of 2008-09. And it is going to get worse.
Super explains the failure of the government to prepare for this particular aspect of the pandemic.
Our country is on the brink of the most widespread hunger crisis since the 1930s. Sadly, we face this specter dreadfully ill-equipped. Just as the 2008 financial crisis exposed our failure to heed the Great Depression’s lessons and our response to COVID-19 showed unwarranted complacency about public health, we have seriously weakened our nutrition safety net over the years.
The cracks in American society—which a burgeoning stock market and low employment numbers managed to gloss over for the past decade—have now, in light of massive job losses caused by the crisis, expanded into chasms which threaten to swallow millions of families whole. As I wrote in April, and Super notes, there are literally thousands of cars now lining up every day at overwhelmed food banks all across this country. Many of the people in those cars never needed a food bank before now. It is absolutely the responsibility of the federal government to respond to a situation of this magnitude, as states do not have the resources and the sheer quantity of food that needs to be allocated cannot be dependent wholly on private donations, particularly in an environment where the economic security of most Americans is under dire threat.
Yet the federal response to this sudden and unprecedented spike in hunger, and particularly the threat to children, has thus far been hamstrung by a Republican Senate. Mitch McConnell and his minions are glaringly more concerned about assuaging the financial pain of corporations and businesses, rather than addressing the critical, emergency needs of people who need assistance to cope with this calamity. On top of this wanton disregard for actual lives, what we now hear from the Republican Party are increasingly shrill demands to reopen many businesses, essentially guaranteeing the rate of infection will spike. That is the totality of the Republican “response” to a hunger crisis that is already at a critical stage.
If Republicans did not control the Senate, such malice could be disregarded. But as long as they have the power to skew legislation to aid their corporate donors, they will continue to provide as little funding as possible toward anything else. Specifically, the GOP will bend over backward to avoid providing sustenance to people of color and others who they consider unworthy of such aid. That victim-blaming mindset is one reason Republican governors have eagerly followed Trump’s lead in encouraging the reopening of businesses. They want to shift the blame for inflicting continued pain from themselves to the people that are hurting the most.
But the American people are simply not ready to reopen the economy. They are well aware of the dangers, and for the most part they are not going to risk their lives and those of their families by participating as guinea pigs in a Republican-inspired laboratory experiment. Despite the over-amplified complaints of a few hundred misguided stooges egged on by right-wing billionaires, this economy is not going to truly reopen until consumers and employees feel it is safe enough to do so. Many will simply risk termination and refuse to go into the workplace, and many more will simply refuse to patronize these “opened” establishments, either out of concern about coming in contact with the virus, or due simply to a lack of financial resources. As TPM’s Josh Marshall observes, despite the illusion these Republicans wish to create, the economy cannot be reopened by executive fiat.
Most of the parts of the economy that are in deep freeze are based on voluntary actions we take with other people – restaurants, bars, theaters, travel, entertainment and more. Put a different way, it’s not a matter or ‘reopening’ the economy. It’s about convincing the public it’s safe to rejoin it. Orders or no orders, those won’t come back in any viable way until people have some relative assurance they won’t get sick, that the epidemic is under control if not over.
For many parents of small children (now suffering from food insecurity), there is no conceivable way for them to “return to work,” as all schools are shuttered and most daycares are closed. For single parents with children—a group comprised overwhelmingly of women—“returning to work” means, if they’re lucky, leaving their child(ren) either with a nonworking friend or a relative. But “social distancing” to avoid infecting the children or anyone who cares for them becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Moreover, a substantial number of the people most in need of food right now are already working—they are the people staffing grocery stores, hardware stores, delivery services, and fast-food restaurants who have been deemed “essential” during this crisis. As Super writes, most of these people are risking their lives—and those of their families—just to keep food on the table:
Many frightened people with heightened risk factors continue in dangerous jobs — supermarket clerks, letter carriers, delivery people — because the alternative is going without. More and more, they and their family members are getting sick.
It isn’t just the loss of jobs that has exacerbated the food crisis, nor is it simply the closure of schools and child care centers that resulted in tens of millions of children being denied a third meal for the day. These are certainly catalysts for the marked increase in hunger, but these factors are infinitely worsened by the disregard and dysfunction of a government that treats feeding people as a “bargaining chip.” Food should not be arbitrarily extended or withdrawn depending on a racially motivated “morality” dictated by white Republican legislators determined to punish poorer Americans for what they consider “laziness” or “dependency.” This is why the Trump administration cut off SNAP benefits to hundreds of thousands of poor or low-income Americans—before the pandemic even struck. As The New York Times reported this week, Republicans are determined to make sure that Trump’s SNAP cuts stick.
[D]espite their support for spending trillions on other programs to mitigate those hardships, Republicans have balked at a long-term expansion of food stamps — a core feature of the safety net that once enjoyed broad support but is now a source of a highly partisan divide.
Democrats want to raise food stamp benefits by 15 percent for the duration of the economic crisis, arguing that a similar move during the Great Recession reduced hunger and helped the economy. But Republicans have fought for years to shrink the program, saying that the earlier liberalization led to enduring caseload growth and a backdoor expansion of the welfare state.
It’s a mindless and reflexive feature of the Republican theology that leaves Republicans unable to get past the fact that we are well beyond these so-called concerns about creating “a welfare state.” Tens of millions of people responsible for small children are now out of work. As the Times article points out, unlike thead hoc, piecemeal legislation demanded by the Republican Senate—with billions thrown at corporations simply to protect them from bankruptcy, and a measly $1,200 check for distressed families to cover all their imaginable bills—food stamps through the SNAP program are a proven, workable solution to the hunger experienced by actual Americans during this emergency. But if a program does anything that actually helps Americans, we already know who will try to kill it.
Trump has done all he can to shrink the program. He sought budget cuts of 30 percent. He tried to replace part of the benefit with “Harvest Boxes” of cheaper commodities. He tried to reduce eligibility and expand work rules to a much larger share of the caseload. When Congress balked, he pursued his goals through regulations. His chief of staff, Mark Meadows, called last year for using erroneous food stamp payments to fund the border wall.
Never one to waste an opportunity to harm poorer Americans, Trump delegated the allotment of financial aid provided by the emergency stimulus legislation through the IRS, rather than by checking the SNAP rolls. As Super observes, this approach virtually guaranteed that those too poor to file a tax return would receive no aid at all
The latest demand—really an ultimatum—from the Republican Senate is for “legal immunity” for businesses if workers contract COVID-19 after being forced to return to work in the states rushing to reopen (under threat of losing their unemployment compensation benefits if they refuse). Although this cruel approach is not unexpected from a political party that prioritizes business concerns over people, it still ignores the fact that the economy is at the mercy of the American consumer.
Until the food needs of Americans are secured, House Democrats shouldn’t even think of negotiating with Senate Republicans.