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State officials, activists and lawmakers are pressing for a renewal of funding for food assistance programs championed early in the pandemic amidst business closures, the Sun-Gazette reported in Monday's edition.
The lawmakers and activists are telling the truth about the need -- just not the whole truth.
Rising costs and supply chain issues are continuing to apply pressure to school-based nutrition programs and other food assistance programs.
However, what the activists seem reluctant to acknowledge are that wages also are up, the unemployment rate is down and our country is confronted by a labor shortage -- which plays a large part itself in the supply chain issues to which the activists point as a reason for the necessity of more funding.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages and benefits increased by 4% in 2021 over 2020. The U.S. unemployment rate for February is 3.8% -- down from 14.7% in April 2020. And anywhere you look, it seems employers are hiring.
Still, the programs being discussed assist children specifically, with one lawmaker saying of one of the programs, "this program has been universally popular with families, and if you ask a parent of a school-age child, they'll probably tell you it was one of the best things to come out of the last two years," according to Ryan Brown's column in Monday's edition.
So while we can't and wouldn't attempt to justify holding hungry children accountable for their parents declining to pursue these many open positions, we do believe that expansion of nutritional should be a temporary measure, that spending should be cut elsewhere in the federal budget and that some of the spending cuts should be achieved with stricter standards for other public assistance programs. That would be a compromise that balances the needs of children with a fuller picture of the economic rebound and with the reality of a critical labor shortage confronting Pennsylvania and the entire U.S.