Letters to the Editor: Summer food money

Once again our governor has declined the Federal supplemental summer food program offering $29,000,000 in total ($120 per child for 240,000 Iowa children).  This helpful program is tiny in relation to the almost $11,000,000,000 the state accepts annually from the federal government.   

Why has Reynolds refused this much-needed funding? Last summer her labor-intensive alternative offered only $900,000. Surely, adding balances to debit cards requires less cost, coordination and time than buying and boxing up food and delivering boxes around the state, which the governor’s poorly-funded alternative requires. 

A staff person at the governor’s office told me the real reason the federal money was rejected is that summer cards are issued with the individual child’s name on them and children cannot be trusted to buy healthy food. However, this justification is neither valid nor credible. I  learned from a state legislator that in fact the individual state determines whether additional summer funds are loaded onto existing SNAP cards (which are in parents’ names) or whether the state issues new summer cards which can be in either children or parent names. 

Right. The individual STATE decides how to handle this question of names on the cards; there is no requirement that the individual children be on the cards. And parents CAN and DO use cards issued to their children. 

So what is really going on Gov. Reynolds? Why do you accept literally billions from the feds but reject millions that would go directly to families? 

Sue Ravenscroft, Ames

President Grassley?

Well, sports fans, here's the breaking news from pg. A5 of today's (12/2) Wall Street Journal. If the House cannot choose a speaker by Jan. 6 (when they have to certify the election of Trump/Vance/ Musk), and that continues till Jan. 20 (Inauguration Day) then, the presidency passes to the Senate’s president pro tempore — 91-year-old Senator Charles Grassley! (So much for passing the torch to the young!) You couldn't make this stuff up, even if you were the best potboiler author on the planet.

Jim Walters, Iowa City

Pressing matters

I’ve got an old Franklin half dollar stashed in a little box of keepsakes. It’s from the year I was born. Every time I turn to your editorial page and see that Pulitzer medal up at the top it subconsciously reminds me of my special fifty-cent piece. Because sure enough, that is Ben Franklin on the Pulitzer, I just realized! With a printing pressman on the flip side, a nod to what Ben was proudest of, among his many distinguished endeavors. A trade/art that he apprenticed in at his older brother’s elbow. Shades of the Cullens. It’s on the record that a newspaperman was one of the linchpin Founding Fathers. Let’s remember that as the press comes under renewed heavy fire from the prez.

I bet you keep your 2017 Franklin in a special place too, right? Like I do my 1954.

Mike Wellman, Des Moines