Two months ago, the Washington Post featured on its front page an Elk City single, working mother of three teenagers who was struggling to feed her family. It was a look at how states that turned down the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer program were faring.
In places like Elk City, not well.
The program provides qualifying low-income families $40 a month per child in the summer ($120 total for June, July and August) to buy food. It's put on an EBT card so families can purchase food at local stores.
Gov. Kevin Stitt, along with 12 other Republican governors, turned down the program for this summer, alleging that the Biden administration was pushing "certain agenda items on kids.”
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Stitt has also turned down the program for next summer under the rationale that the elimination of the state's grocery tax will save Oklahoma families an average of $800 a year, adding that the "Biden-Harris handout isn’t solving child hunger in 2025." Stitt claims that the program "floundered" in states that accepted the funds.
The Oklahoma Policy Institute stated that the average savings from eliminating the grocery tax is closer to $250 per family annually.
Regardless, it's out of touch to think that the 4.5% tax reduction on food will solve Oklahoma's hunger problem. Some families cannot afford food, especially when facing challenges such as medical debt, housing instability and job loss.
Or, as the Washington Post's heartbreaking profile showed, the expense of raising children exceeds what jobs are paying. In Elk City, the city's poverty rate is 26%, double the national average. The local food bank director called rejecting the summer program "devastating" and said the food bank had trouble meeting demand.
In Oklahoma, about 1 in 4 children (25%) are considered food insecure. Tulsa World reporter Melissa Jacques found USDA data showing that Oklahoma had 398,357 students last May receiving meals through free- and reduced-meals at public schools.
About 250,000 Oklahoma children were denied access to food these past three months because Oklahoma opted out of the Summer EBT program, according to Hunger Free Oklahoma.
More children would have gone hungry, but the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Muscogee nations participated in the federal program and opened it to Indigenous and non-Indigenous children living within their reservation boundaries.
Struggling families in rural Oklahoma outside those tribes' reach often went hungry. That was avoidable.
Stitt's press secretary, Meyer Siegfried, repeated a long-held argument from some conservatives that nonprofits and faith institutions can replace government hunger-assistance programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and school-based meal assistance.
Again, this is a short-sighted view of the programs. The need far exceeds what charitable giving can provide.
Oklahoma's two major food banks — the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma and the Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma — signed a letter asking Stitt to implement the Summer EBT Program.
Food assistance programs are not government handouts. These are part of the infrastructure to keep Americans healthy and food producers from going out of business.
We have a moral responsibility to keep our children nourished for healthy development. Oklahoma needs the Summer EBT program.
