Kansas bill blocks hungry kids from getting $40 for food. How did we get here? | Opinion
As someone who has “hung out” in the Kansas Legislature with lawmakers since 1987, I have seen the highs and lows of policymaking. My heart shakes at what I am witnessing in the 2024 legislative session.
How did we get here?
The Chair of the House Welfare Reform Committee, state Rep. Francis Awerkamp, has introduced H.B. 2674. This bill would block Gov. Laura Kelly from offering a program that helps families living on low wages buy food during the summer. Under the plan, these families would receive an Electronic Benefits Transfer card with $40 a month for the child that could be spent only on food. This benefit would last for the three months of summer.
H.B. 2674 would not allow Kansas to participate in this federal program designed to help families with rising food costs and hungry children.
How did we get here?
I know that I have seen different experiences — parents with multiple jobs, children who have endured serious trauma, people who are in the prison system, victims of crime and families walking the walk of a loved one who died by homicide or suicide. I lived in a neighborhood with significant poverty for 19 years. I belong to a family that has always prized children and their needs. I am a 60-year member of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth who have only deepened my care for children. Is there blindness today to what some of us have experienced — for example, hungry children?
I will no longer freely use the term “child welfare.” Instead, I am using “family welfare.” Struggling to meet basic needs should be respected and supported — even with something as simple as an extra $40 to feed a child in the summer months.
While H.B. 2674 is being entertained, members of the Legislature are getting ready to receive a salary increase that will nearly double what they’re currently paid, and includes health insurance and a healthy retirement contribution. Frankly, I approve of this increase in the hopes that it will allow more younger people to consider becoming policymakers for Kansas. Involved legislators who communicate with, listen to and engage with their constituents deserves this increase. However, I also think hungry children deserve food.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician heroine of the lead pipe story in Flint, Michigan, commented in her book “What The Eyes Don’t See”: “Too many kids are growing up in a nation that does not value their future — or even try to offer them a better one.”
Please call your Kansas legislators.
In the richest nation in the history of the world, how did we get here?
Sister Therese Bangert of Kansas City, Kansas, is a justice advocate for the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.
This story was originally published February 21, 2024 at 5:07 AM.