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The House Republicans released a proposed agriculture and food safety budget on Monday. The budget offers less in food program funding than President Obama requested, which comes as no surprise. However, one specific provision in the House proposal should raise eyebrows. The House Republicans have scaled back a summer school lunch pilot program, so that it will be applied to rural areas only. The pilot program which was introduced with an initial expenditure of 85 million dollars, has been scaled back to a 27 million dollar expenditure going forward, with urban areas being completely cut out of the funding.
More specifically the funding is confined to rural counties in the Appalachian region. So while predominately white impoverished rural counties will benefit from the program, predominately black counties in the Mississippi Delta, majority Hispanic counties in the Rio Grande Valley, and Indian Reservations out West will not be included. While, the program will not exclude non-white recipients from receiving the free summer lunches, by restricting the program to overwhelmingly white Appalachian rural counties, the message is nevertheless quite clear. In the eyes of today’s Republicans, poor white folks in the conservative hills of Appalachia are poor through no fault of their own and should qualify for government food assistance, but poor minorities in urban areas (or high minority concentration rural areas) are undeserving of government help.
Democrats in the House were quick to notice that hungry urban kids are getting the shaft from the Republican House. Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) who was born in the Bronx but now represents constituents in Rockland and Westchester Counties criticized the GOP measure arguing that:
Excluding children from urban areas jeopardizes the effectiveness of the demonstration program and is also mean-spirited. Hunger isn’t bound by per capita population data, and the children in urban areas shouldn’t be penalized because of where they live.
Lowey raised a rather obvious point. Hunger is hunger, whether it takes place in a rural hamlet tucked away in the hills or in a densely populated neighborhood in the shadow of downtown skyscrapers. Hunger is hunger whether the child is white or brown, and whether the child’s parents are Democrats, Republicans, Independents or non-voters. The Republican Party’s geographical bias, and the not so subtle racism that lies beneath their demographic prejudices is indeed mean-spirited.
Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful re-election bid in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.
