The effect on school meals, revealed by Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, was not disclosed when the proposed food stamp rule was published last week. Agriculture officials said the new rule would close a loophole they said allowed people with high incomes and accumulated assets to receive food stamps. The Agriculture Department said the proposal would cut off an estimated 3 million people from food stamps, a figure critics said would include tens of thousands of working poor families.
But the department said nothing about children from those same households who would automatically lose eligibility for free meals at school.
“It would very much be a double whammy for those children,” said Lisa Davis, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign.
Scott said his staff were made aware that students would lose their automatic eligibility for free school meals in a phone call July 22 with staff members from the Agriculture Department. In a letter, he implored Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, to disclose the figures as part of the department’s regulatory impact analysis and restart the 60-day comment period.
“The effect on school meal eligibility represents an important technical finding that must be made public so that stakeholders have the opportunity to comment on all aspects of the rule’s impact,” Scott wrote.
The Agriculture Department has not revealed the number of children who could be affected by the proposal.
The department has said that the proposed rule for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, “ensures SNAP benefits go to those who meet the eligibility criteria as outlined by Congress, not millionaires or those who simply received a referral to a nonworking 800 number.”
Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the rule would ensure the government was “providing resources to the children who are in need and not providing resources to those who are not in need.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.