What's More Important: Food Stamps or School Lunch?

UPDATE 12/02/10: The House voted in favor of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, ushering in school lunch reform. The move came after more than 15,000 Change.org members signed a petition supporting the Child Nutrition Act and more than 1,000 members urged Congress to reform school lunch without cutting future funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps.  While the bill still includes SNAP cuts, President Obama and Congressional leaders have promised to fix these reductions. Read the full story here.

Should we rob Peter to feed Paul? Apparently some lawmakers think so.

New data shows that government spending on food stamps continues to climb — the federal government currently spends about $5.6 billion a month on the program, to be exact. According to the Christian Science Monitor, July alone saw more than 560,000 people enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise — in the wake of the economic downturn, millions of Americans are still without jobs, so they need a little help feeding their families each week.

At the same time that more folks are signing up for food stamp benefits, the program itself is under threat. The proposed Child Nutrition Act aims to make school lunches healthier and enroll more students in the free- and reduced-cost meal program. On its face, the Child Nutrition Act looks like a solid plan. But like most ideas that seem too good to be true, here's the big caveat: To pay for the child nutrition bill, some lawmakers want to slash funding for food stamps.

According to Truthout, proponents of the plan argue that lawmakers aren't really cutting food stamp funds — they're merely removing a boost offered by the 2009 stimulus bill. The bottom line is that funding the Child Nutrition Act through proposed cuts would take away about $2.2 billion from the food stamp program. The loss of that big chunk of change means food stamp recipients would receive a little less dough each week, forcing them to either buy less food or buy less healthy food (think groceries that are cheap on price and nutrition, like Wonder Bread and hot dogs).

That's not to say that school lunch isn't in need of a serious overhaul. Congress hasn't raised the federal reimbursement rate for school lunches since 1973. That lack of funding is part of the reason kids get nothing but dubious entrees like processed chicken nuggets and greasy pizza slices in their cafeterias. The Child Nutrition Act would admittedly only provide small improvements, but they would act as a first step towards the sweeping reform school lunch really needs.

What's really ironic about this whole situation is that both food stamps and the National School Lunch Program aim to keep kids from going hungry. Stealing money from one to fund the other is like taking away children's dinner in order to give them lunch.

In order to get kids the nutrition they need, America needs a solid food stamp and school lunch program. Sign our petition telling Congress that we need the Child Nutrition Act passed without any cuts to the food stamp program.

Photo credit: Debs via Flickr