As 2024 draws to a close, the Iowa Hunger Coalition (IHC) is making one final push to persuade Gov. Kim Reynolds to participate in the USDA Summer EBT for Children program in 2025. That program, also known as SUN Bucks, provides $40 a month per child to a family's SNAP benefit card during the three months the kids are out of school for their summer break.
Iowa is one of 14 Republican-led states -- along with Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming -- that rejected increased federal food assistance through the Summer EBT program this year. In August, Gov. Reynolds announced in August Iowa would also reject the funding for the summer of 2025.
On Tuesday, IHC emailed the governor a letter signed by 153 nonprofits, community groups and religious organizations, asking her to change her position and agree to participate in the program before the USDA's deadline for states to sign up on Jan. 1.
"In a country as wealthy as the United States of America, and in a state with as rich an agricultural tradition as Iowa, no child should ever go hungry," the letter says. "No matter who takes care of them, no matter where they live, no matter what."
"SUN Bucks would provide $29 million in nutrition benefits to a quarter of a million children across the state next summer. While a $40 monthly benefit per eligible child may not seem like a large amount, it would absolutely make a meaningful difference in the lives of Iowa families."
Asked on Thursday if there had been any response from the governor's office, IHC Chair Luke Elzinga said, "No."
"In Iowa, our focus is on the comprehensive well-being of this generation of young Iowans," Iowa Department of Health and Human Services Director Kelly Garcia said in a written statement issued by the governor's office. "Our solutions to promote healthy behaviors and well-balanced, nutritious diets for children must be comprehensive and holistic."
The governor's office said in that statement it was applying to the USDA for a waiver to use the money Iowans would have received through the Summer EBT program to create its own demonstration program this summer.
"Three monthly boxes with healthy foods would be available at distribution sites during the summer months," is how the governor's office described its project in the August news release. The boxes would be available to families whose children receive free or reduced price school meals that sign up for the project. There would be a home-delivery option for those who are unable to get to a site.
"Frankly, that's an antiquated model," Elzinga told Little Village. "That's how programs operated 20 years ago. It's not how they operate today."
Elzinga pointed to research analyzing 12 years of data on the Summer EBT program that show its effectiveness. A summary of the research published by the USDA in March found that the additional benefit not only led to a decrease in stress on participating families, it also improved nutritional outcomes for the children in those families, with the kids eating more fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
"Through this waiver request, the governor is asserting that the State knows better than its own families do about what their needs are," the USDA said in a statement after receiving the waiver request in August.
"The evidence-based Summer EBT program is successfully being run in more than three dozen states, territories, and tribes helping 21 million children across the U.S. USDA stands ready to support additional states, including Iowa, in offering Summer EBT to even more kids."
Despite that skeptical reaction, the agency did conduct a formal review of the request. It wasn't until late November that the USDA officially rejected the governor's request. Rather than join the Summer EBT program after the rejection, Reynolds plans to resubmit the request after President-elect Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
The governor is asking the USDA to let her administration use the Summer EBT funds like a block grant to fund its box distribution plan. But the law creating the Summer EBT program and appropriating the funds for it specify the money be used for the Summer EBT benefits. There is no option that gives the USDA the authority to redirect that money to a demonstration program like the one Reynolds proposes.
"The answer can't be to wait and see what the Trump administration does," Elzinga said. "Because Iowans can't wait. Food pantries, food banks across the state continue to break records with really no end in sight."
Elzinga is the Policy and Advocacy Manager for the Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC) Food Pantry Network and has seen that need first-hand.
November was the busiest month DMARC has experienced since the food pantry network was established in 1976. According to a news release from DMARC earlier this month, its pantries "assisted 29,627 unique individuals during the month of November... 10,496 of those assisted during this record month were under the age of 18. This is a number that was previously unthinkable before this fall, making up about 1 in 3 of everyone getting food assistance."
Elzinga said the unprecedent surge in need food pantries in Iowa have seen started building after the additional SNAP benefits provided by the federal government because of the COVID-19 pandemic ended in April 2022. (The additional benefits ended earlier in Iowa than in other states, because Gov. Reynolds officially declared the public health emergency caused by the pandemic to be over in February 2022. Thirty-two states continued to receive the extra SNAP funding until February 2023 when the federal government ended the enhanced benefits.)
"During the pandemic, our numbers were actually down," Elzinga said. "It wasn't that the need was not there, it's that people had access to additional governmental programs and community support that were able to help meet those needs."
"We've seen in our data how policies impact the number of people turning to food pantries," he added.
The Iowa Hunger Coalition and other groups have been working all year long, just as they did last year, to change the governor's mind about the Summer EBT program, but Elzinga isn't hopeful that there will be a last-minute switch. Still, he said this final push with the letter from over 150 groups was worth doing.
"We just have to keep speaking out on this," Elzinga said. "The fact that we are denying 245,000 kids in the state of Iowa access to these benefits based on, I think, ideology, is really unfortunate. To me this should be the most bipartisan no-brainer program out there. We're talking about feeding low-income kids during the summer when they're out of school."
"Frankly, I don't think there's any good reason not to do this program."