Three states and two tribal nations will get $27 million in grants to help fight child hunger, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced. Nice, right? Wellll ... there's a catch, as Ned Resnikoff explains. See, the grants are made possible by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was championed by Michelle Obama—and which was paid for by cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“It’s the old magician’s trick of misdirection,” [New York City Coalition Against Hunger executive director Joel Berg] said. “Look at the shiny coin while we’re picking your pocket.”
In order to fund the programs in the HHFKA, the bill’s authors took $2.2 billion from SNAP’s coffers. Many House Democrats expressed reluctance about legislation that would slash food stamp benefits, but the bill passed after Michelle Obama lobbied Congress and the White House assured reticent Democrats that funding would be restored in the future.
That was in 2010. Then, Republicans won the House and the money was never replaced, leading to the abrupt SNAP benefits cut of November 2013. So it's nice that kids in Nevada, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Chickasaw and Navajo nations will benefit from new programs to fight hunger. But the fact is, many of those same kids are probably in households that had their food stamps cut in 2013, in part because of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.