The next threat: Hunger in America
Opinion piece at WaPo:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html
At one food pantry in Central Texas, the queue of cars waiting to pick up boxes of food stretches a quarter-mile. In Dayton, Ohio, the line extends about a mile.
In Pittsburgh, it’s miles, plural, as families wait hours so they won’t go hungry.
Across the country, one of the less visible parts of the social safety net — tens of thousands of food pantries and food banks — is starting to fray. The federal government must do more before it unravels.
Unsurprisingly, demand for food assistance is surging.
The federal government has taken steps designed to beef up food assistance. These include funding for additional commodity purchases from farmers, for emergency food programs; and allowing states to temporarily give more households the maximum food-stamp benefit.
Much more needs to be done.
First, the Agriculture Department needs to reduce cumbersome paperwork requirements for food banks and food pantries. It usually does this after natural disasters, when the goal is to serve as many people as quickly as possible. The measure seems doubly important during a disaster caused not by a hurricane but by an infectious disease, when trading pens and paperwork back and forth is risky.
But USDA officials have dragged their feet on waiving such requirements.
Second, Congress needs to pass “phase four” coronavirus relief legislation that increases the maximum value of food-stamp benefits, as it did in response to the Great Recession. (The Families First Coronavirus Response Act allowed states to give more households the maximum benefit but did not raise the ceiling for benefits.)
