By Kriston Capps and Laura Bliss, CityLab, March 17, 2020
Back in October 2009, when fears about the H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic were at a crisis point in the U.S., Congress passed emergency legislation to boost the reach of the safety net. The law authorized federal food aid benefits to replace free or reduced-price school lunches for eligible children whose schools were closed for more than five consecutive days.
More than 700 schools closed across the U.S. during the course of that crisis, affecting nearly 370,000 students. Then as now, free or reduced-price school meals were a crucial source of food for children in low-income homes. By shifting the delivery of this aid from schools to food stamps through the Pandemic Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or P-SNAP, lawmakers tried to avert a knock-on hunger crisis spurred by the disaster response.
In the end, P-SNAP benefits were never used. School closures were brief, not all the schools that closed relied heavily on food stamps, and few districts were aware of P-SNAP’s existence. Now that the nation is facing a much more severe pandemic, however, P-SNAP’s big moment may be at hand. After U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue called on Congress to reboot P-SNAP as part of the government’s unfolding response to the coronavirus crisis, the House passed a bill on Saturday that would do exactly that.
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