AOC wants to tax the rich.
Bernie Sanders wants to eat the rich.
Now President Biden wants taxpayers to feed the rich with a free-for-all school-lunch program that includes six- and seven-figure income earners.
When governments shuttered schools in 2020, state agencies mailed Electronic Benefits Transfer cards to families whose children qualified for taxpayer-funded meals during the school year.
The federal government then extended the program into the summer months as “temporary” assistance.
The Pandemic-EBT program stacked on top of the food-stamp program, already available to needy families year-round, amounts to nearly $1,000 per month for a family of four.
Like most “temporary” government programs, Pandemic-EBT, now called Summer EBT, is here to stay.
The decision to implement Summer EBT is ultimately up to states.
Gov. Hochul, of course, took the bait.
This is a federal-government program, but New York will still be on the hook for half the state’s administrative costs.
Team Biden’s new plan would drastically expand who is eligible for free school lunch during summer months by using the Community Eligibility Provision, not individual income as the food-stamp program uses.
In fact, students who attend a qualifying school would not need to submit an application for free meals at all.
CEP says if a certain number of students in a school qualify for free lunch based on their families’ low incomes, all students in that school qualify, even those whose higher family incomes would normally make them ineligible.
Since Biden bureaucrats just months ago lowered this eligibility level, a school needs to have only one-quarter of students eligible for a taxpayer-funded lunch to make the entire school eligible — down from 40%.
The US Department of Agriculture admits this expansion won’t be financially viable for many schools.
Hochul recently committed $134 million in state taxpayer funds to push schools to implement CEP.
Under these new guidelines, more than 70% of public-school children — 35 million students — could be eligible for taxpayer-funded summer lunches with no application or income requirements.
These students are already newly eligible for a taxpayer-funded lunch during the school year, no matter their family’s income.
USDA “stands ready” to apply this unfettered standard to Summer EBT.
It’s clear the Biden administration wants the Summer EBT program’s relaxed criteria to mirror those of the Pandemic-EBT — which would mean sending EBT cards to high-income families.
The true cost is still unknown.
Team Biden knows permanently expanding welfare means expanding the Democratic voter base in an election year.
And in the rush to cast a wider net to entice voters with free food, high-income families will get scooped up into a now-permanent free-lunch program originally pitched to help needy families forced into remote learning.
Thirty-seven states and Washington, DC, have opted into Summer EBT, the reincarnation of a provision from Biden’s failed Build Back Better plan.
That count could change, with some state lawmakers fighting legislatively to force adoption of the taxpayer-funded meal program that would send an extra $40 per child per month to families each summer.
And the Biden administration, along with prominent Democrats, has resorted to bullying GOP-led states that aren’t playing along, with those like Nebraska changing their minds about joining the expanded federal program.
Truly needy families already qualify for generous food-stamp benefits year-round.
And under the Biden administration, those recipients received a 27% raise in a move that circumvented Congress and drove up grocery prices.
Many states also have their own summer-meal programs, and state budgets give substantial money to food banks.
The reality is Summer EBT is not about childhood hunger.
The plan all along has been universal taxpayer-funded meals to students, regardless of income. Permanent Summer EBT, along with lowering CEP eligibility, has been on Biden’s agenda since his Build Back Better failure.
Conditioning students to receive pre-loaded EBT cards before they leave the nest will create a new generation of dependency rather than helping those who truly need it.
Unfortunately, standing up for policies that promote self-sufficiency and independence has always been more difficult than selling “free” money.
The 13 holdout states deserve a tremendous amount of credit for rejecting Biden’s plan to use tax dollars to feed high-income families.
It’s welfare expansion at its worst.
Too many of their peers have forgotten that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Paige Terryberry is a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability.