Billionaires Need Tax Cut, So Food Banks Gotta Get By Without The 'Food' Part
Now arrest the nonprofits for running unlicensed banks.
The Trump administration’s Bountiful Austerity Drive continues slashing its way through the waste and abuse in federal government spending, insuring prosperity for all Americans by taking food away from the poor, who don’t deserve it anyway. What have they ever done for Donald Trump? Truly our Emperor is wise, for he has granted unto a grateful population a billion dollar cut to food bank programs, courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture and its Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). That billion-dollar hit won’t only mean less food in the unworthy bellies of America’s greedy poors; it also represents a big goose egg for US farmers who would have provided the fresh food to unwashed layabouts and their unwashed urchin children. Considering the value of eggs, the farmers should be grateful!
The administration justified the cuts by insisting reduced federal spending would help ease inflation, making food more affordable, so stop looking for a handout while you wait in an hour long line at the food bank. The latest cuts come on top of cuts to another program that helped food banks and school nutrition programs purchase fresh produce from local farms, as if Lunch Lady Doris were running a farm-to-folding-cafeteria-table bistro.
Thank goodness some schools, like those in Detroit, are generously letting Wonkette readers buy pizza kits to offset the loss of federal education funding! Wait, it’s not a loss. It’s an increase to less money.
Reuters reports that food banks in seven states expect the disruptions to federal food programs mean they will
offer less produce, meat and other staples in the coming weeks and months, leaving scarcer food for those reliant on free supplies that helped stave off hunger.
One reason is fewer expected shipments from USDA's The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), one of the agency's core nutrition programs that buys food from farmers and sends it to food pantries, some of the organizations said.
Vince Hall, with America’s biggest food bank network, Feeding America, said member food banks can’t TEFAP to this, because USDA paused half the program’s annual budget while it’s under “review.” Under the current regime, that means “finding a semi-plausible pretext for eliminating the program.”
We bet it’s “DEI”! Everything is “DEI” these days, even trees!
But don’t you fret none, because a USDA spox “told Reuters the agency is still making purchases to support food banks but did not respond to detailed questions about TEFAP spending and why food banks are seeing reduced deliveries.” It’s probably just all in their heads, really. You know how sometimes the place you grew up looks a lot smaller if you go back as an adult? Maybe all seven of the food banks had a sudden growth spurt and their perspective is now so messed up that it no longer recognizes America. We know the feeling.
Reuters explains the $500 million pause in TEFAP funding comes on top of the cancellation of a different USDA program, the “Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) program, which funded about $500 million annually for food banks,” even though you can’t make any filthy jokes about that abbreviation. Just as well, since the entire Trump administration is a dirty joke.
This latest Trumpfuckery undoes an initiative by the Biden administration that funded emergency food assistance through the end of fiscal 2025 so people wouldn’t go hungry, The New York Times reports (gift link). You’d be forgiven for thinking that was a different program, since the delicate Grey Lady calls it simply the “Emergency Food Assistance Program” and doesn’t abbreviate nothing, since “EFAP” would sound even dirtier than Reuters’s version.
With Republicans “considering” cuts to other food assistance programs in their Great Big Reconciliation Bill, the folks who run food banks worry that any decrease in public food assistance will drive even more people to food banks just as they too lose funding. It’s a legitimate worry, since Goopers are “considering” massive cuts to safety net and nutrition programs the same way they’re “considering” massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.
Some of the biggest impacts would be felt in rural America, Feeding America’s Vince Hall said, because the USDA aid doesn’t just include food, it also covers funding for distribution and storage, which makes replacing the aid with private donations an even bigger challenge.
And before you filthy fuckaducks start leaving comments about how that’s pretty great payback for people who voted for Trump, ha! ha! you might keep in mind that’s also going to mean a lot of hungry children, who didn’t vote at all, and misery for children of color, whose parents overwhelmingly didn’t vote for Trump. Yeah, sorry to tamp down anyone’s glee at people going hungry.
The Times explains that the cuts will hit some states harder than others. Maryland’s food banks may well weather the reduced supplies without having to cut back food distributions to the people who rely on them, according to officials of that state’s food bank system. But in Virginia, it’s another story:
Eddie Oliver, the executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks, said one food bank lost a scheduled shipment of seven loads of food, accounting for about a third of what the food bank was expecting this year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program.
“It’s going to be hard for us to replace that,” he said, noting the current economic climate. “Collectively, Virginia food banks are spending five times more money on food than we did in 2019, both because of higher food prices and greater demand at our pantries.”
Reuters reports that West Virginia is already seeing a big hit to help from USDA, too. In Charleston, Sara Busse of Trinity’s Table showed Reuters all that that her group recently received from the Ag Department:
two boxes each of dried potato flakes and shelf-stable milk and two cases of vegetarian baked beans.
Before the Trump administration began, the deliveries filled an 18-wheeler, she said. Now, the program may need to halt its meal service to senior groups altogether, she said.
“It’s dreary, it’s very frightening. We’re all losing sleep,” she said.
Martha Ross, 78, a nice lady having a meal at a community center in Charleston, noticed the tiny donations and joked, “I guess we’ll get real skinny.”
Reuters very inconsiderately didn’t ask Ms. Ross how (or whether) she voted, denying us the chance to declare whether she deserves to suffer or not. How about nobody deserves to go hungry except the evil deceitful fuckers who are directly responsible for this?
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I don't know.... I just don't.
Seventy-seven million Americans wanted this. Tens of millions who sat on the couch wanted this. Tens of millions look at increased hunger and think it's a good thing.
Like you said, no one should go hungry.
Even the murderous Al Capone ran a soup kitchen.
We're the largest fucking economy in the world. Elon Musk wouldn't even miss a billion dollars a year. (He might by next year if Tesla keeps losing value.)
I don't know how you can choose to be worse than Al Capone. I don't know how you can live with yourself if you cause so much fucking misery and suffering and death with the stroke of a pen or an Excel sheet.
I don't understand why we let the wicked prosper like this while the innocent suffer. I don't fucking understand why so many Americans FUCKING VOTED FOR THIS AND SUPPORT THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT!
WHAT THE UNHOLY FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Most of you call yourselves fucking Christians. DO YOU NOT FEAR YOUR GOD? DO YOU LACK EVEN SO MUCH DECENCY AS TO REFUSE TO FEED A FUCKING CHILD?
people have no fucking clue. as someone who grew up with USDA cheese, powdered milk, and canned goods, the stigma is bad enough. what do they think people are getting, sirloin steak? it's only the barest of bare essentials. the level of cruelty never ceases to amaze me.