Universal day care would be beneficial
It could help curb the reliance on food banks
The Mid-south Food Bank knew this day was coming.
Last year, when the pandemic began stealing jobs, the Mid-south Food Bank called on the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, or TEMA, and the USDA’S Farmers to Families Food Box Program to stop it from stealing people’s access to food.
It was a call that TEMA and the USDA heeded. Between May of 2020 and August of this year, they delivered 30 million pounds of food to warehouses that supply food to the state’s five food banks.
“That’s a lot of food, and that had a big price tag, and they paid for it,” said Cathy Pope, president and CEO of the Mid-south Food Bank.
Problem is, TEMA is exactly what it says it is. It’s an emergency organization. The Farmers to Families Program was slated to end once the pandemic eased.
And the COVID-19 emergency was supposed to be over, or close to being over, once vaccines were available and people were able to return to work without fear of bringing a deadly pathogen home along with their paychecks.
But those pandemic deadlines haven’t jibed with pandemic reality.
Among other things, scores of women in Shelby County and throughout the nation, for that matter, cannot return to the workforce because many of the day care centers which shut down during the pandemic haven’t reopened.
Which isn’t surprising – seeing that before COVID-19 struck, nearly half of all Tennesseans were living in census tracts with no or too few childcare providers for the children who live there.
That reality explains, at least in part, why Gov. Bill Lee’s decision to end the $300 weekly federal unemployment subsidy for unemployed Tennesseans hasn’t led to a stampede
of parents – especially mothers – returning to work.
That explains why many families, who make up a majority of the food bank’s clients, still can’t afford enough food to last the month.
But because TEMA must have food for victims of other disasters, such as tornados and storms, it can’t continue to commit resources for a pandemic that many believed, albeit mistakenly, would be history by now.
So in August, the day came when it had to cut the food bank off. That caused food donations to plummet by a third.
And now, the food bank is grappling with the same dilemma as many of the people who seek its help: That it won’t have enough food to go around.
“We try not to be Debbie Downers around here,” said Pope. “We try to put a positive spin on it…we’ll work it out.”
“A donation of $10 we can turn into 30 meals…we pile everything together. We can stretch a dollar.”
No doubt they can.
Still, the food bank’s predicament is a cautionary tale of what happens when the social safety net is too frayed to restore normalcy to people’s lives when a disaster has ripples that go beyond rebuilding homes or providing temporary trailers.
What happens is that many people will fall through the holes.
A solution exists, though.
Back in June, the USDA announced that under President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Initiative, up to $1 billion in the American Rescue Plan Act will be used to, among other things, expand the nation’s emergency food network and to build the capacity of local food banks.
The Shelby County Commission, along with Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, is working on an ARPA spending plan. The food bank has requested money from those funds to feed people who are still struggling from the pandemic blues.
Yet a broader solution exists that will help ease the hunger pangs of people caught between trying to earn money to eat and trying to care for their children during the day.
That solution would be universal pre-kindergarten and affordable childcare.
In the current budget reconciliation bill, which is attached to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, $387 billion would be invested in those areas over ten years. And, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, around 539, 370 jobs in universal pre-k and childcare would be created, as well.
If those bills become law, parents who can’t afford the day care they need to take a job, or who live in communities where the pandemic shut down the day care centers, will have some options.
Having childcare options makes it less likely they will have to rely on emergency food because they’ll be earning enough money to put food on the table themselves.
A win-win all the way around.
Sadly, though, the GOP senators who represent much of the Mid-south are opposed to the Build Back Better bill. They’d rather press buttons to gin up ridiculousness about socialism than to pass legislation that will give their constituents a leg-up on improving their lives.
They see their roles as a license to obstruct, not to govern.
Of course, Pope said if the food bank finds itself in dire need from losing a third of its donations, TEMA will step back in to help.
But that’s not how this is supposed to work.
While many seniors and disabled people will likely always need to rely on the food bank for help, parents shouldn’t be in a situation where they can’t afford enough food because they can’t afford day care. Or because no one is opening new day care centers.
Or because they’re governed by people who care more about protecting ideology than solving problems.
Tonyaa Weathersbee can be reached at tonyaa.weathersbee@commercialappeal.com and you can follow her on Twitter: @tonyaajw