This is the situation in the coronavirus-era United States. We’ve got widespread hunger, overwhelmed food banks, and government relief that isn't arriving fast enough. Those overwhelmed food banks are clear, though: This can’t be solved by the government sending money to food banks. Republicans need to get out of the way of expanding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during this crisis.
“There’s only so much we can do,” Radha Muthiah, president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank, told Politico. “The federal government has an incredibly important role to play here.”
That role could be increasing SNAP benefits by 15%—about $25 per person per month—during this unprecedented crisis. But Republicans say no. The most they’d agree to is a Pandemic EBT program that gave families with children a benefit to replace the food they weren’t getting in school. That’s not enough.
And again, the very people running the charitable system Republicans are more comfortable with say the government needs to act.
“It's just made it abundantly clear that we need additional support from the government," the Vermont FoodBank’s Nicole Whalen told Politico. "This is a network already doing as much as we can. To actually have a really high impact, it's SNAP, it's not this."
To give a sense of what the food banks are coping with, the Vermont FoodBank has had five-mile food lines. In April, the Capital Area Food Bank bought three times as much food as it bought in all of 2019 because of increased need coupled with reduced donations from grocery stores.
Hungry people should not have to wait in line for hours. They should have enough SNAP benefits to go to the grocery store and buy the food their families need. This is a problem that needs a full-scale government response. But Republicans are too committed to stigmatizing poor people to let that happen, even now.
The government needs to step up, but you can help too. Can you give $1 to each of these organizations doing important COVID-19 relief work?