Jim Pillen breaks with 14 other Republican governors to enroll in Summer EBT, a new food program for school vacation months

Jim Pillen breaks with 14 other Republican governors to enroll in Summer EBT, a new food program for school vacation months

Nebraska’s governor announced this week that the state would accept federal dollars to help feed children from low-income families, breaking away from the more than a dozen other Republican governors around the US who have refused to do so.

Just last month, Jim Pillen joined 14 other Republican governors in opting not to enroll in Summer EBT, a new federal food program that provides low-income families with a monthly payment of $40 per child during summer vacation. In participating states, families with children in free or reduced-price school lunch programs will get $40 per qualifying child on an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card throughout each of the three summer months. That money can be used to purchase groceries and food from farmers’ markets.

States were given until the end of 2023 to enroll, and they can enroll in the future even if they’ve skipped the year before. On 16 February, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) told Politico it would still allow states to apply even if they’d missed the enrollment deadlines.

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
    0·
    9 months ago

    “They talked about being hungry. And they talked about the summer USDA program and, depending upon access, when they’d get a sack of food,” Pillen said at a press conference this week. “And from my seat, what I saw there, we have to do better in Nebraska.”

    Alright, give him credit at least. He actually went outside the four walls of the Governor’s Mansion to actually see some of the children. And when he saw that they were indeed very hungry and impoverished by no fault of their own, he understood that he was initially mistaken.

    This is how isolated a lot of State political actors are though. They have no clue as to the actual suffering that goes on within their State and don’t actively seek out further information. For this Governor to do such is actually commendable, because it rarely happens more often than I believe folks like to admit.

    I mean still feel free to hurl stones for other things, but let’s at least give him credit for going out and actually seeing what was really going on. AND admitting that he was wrong. That’s not a common Governor attribute and absolutely a rare occurrence with Republicans to admit being wrong. We should do our best to encourage more of that elsewhere.

    But still feel free to be critical to all the other bullshit this Governor continues to remain blind to.