Checking in on the new, working class Republican Party
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Republican “economic populism” means “stopping Democrats from aiding struggling people, especially those in rural areas, so that you can use the relative impoverishment of rural areas as a political weapon against Democrats”:
Republican governors in 15 states are rejecting a new federally funded program to give food assistance to hungry children during the summer months, denying benefits to 8 million children across the country.
The program is expected to serve 21 million youngstersstarting around June, providing $2.5 billion in relief across the country.
The governors have given varying reasons for refusing to take part, from the price tag to the fact that the final details of the plan have yet to be worked out. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said she saw no need to add money to a program that helps food-insecure youths “when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”
“If some children consume too much food or do not have access to healthy food, then the solution is to deny poor children access to healthy food” is the ultimate in Republican logic.
Reynolds is a horrible person on every level, to the extent that one can see her as a vice presidential candidate one day.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said bluntly, “I don’t believe in welfare.”
Republican leaders have been criticized for playing politics with children in need, but they argue it is necessary to revert to pre-pandemic spending levels at a time when the United States is trillions of dollars in debt and lawmakers in Washington are struggling to come to a budget agreement. The summer food program was approved as part of a bipartisan budget agreement in 2022.
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Other states declining to participate are Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming. Four of these states — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Wyoming — are among the seven that have not fully extended Medicaid eligibility to low-income individuals.
Can’t wait for the next big Atlantic thinkpiece about how Republicans are now the champions of the rural poor that doesn’t contain the word “Medicaid.”