Gov. Maura Healey is correct.
No baby In Massachusetts must go hungry after dropping of federal meals advantages.
All she has to do to make up for the federal government shutdown delay in SNAP (Supplemental Diet Help Program) help is to faucet into the state’s $8 billon “wet day” fund.
That is cash, like a person’s financial savings account, that the state units apart to take care of sudden exhausting monetary occasions. It’s banked and it additionally earns curiosity.
Not that Massachusetts is going through monetary difficulties. It’s not. Tax cash is flowing in.
It’s simply that Healey and the Democrats who management the Legislature — who’re so hooked on federal handouts — don’t need to spend state taxpayer cash to make up for cutbacks, lapses and shortfalls in federal funds.
Take Healey’s quote, for example, in going after Trump on the difficulty. She mentioned “sitting in Washington is a contingency fund of billions of {dollars} that the president can use to make these funds obtainable subsequent week.”
Healey can be sitting on billions of {dollars} in contingency funds that she may make obtainable subsequent week.
Some 1.1 million Massachusetts residents are eligible for plastic EBT (Digital Profit Switch) pay as you go SNAP meals profit playing cards. It involves $240 million a month in federal funds.
Not solely do the playing cards cowl the acquisition of meals at grocery shops, however for supply as effectively.
At present a dozen United Approach organizations have launched a United Response Fund to boost cash to take care of the issue.
Whereas Healey appealed to individuals to donate “to assist feed our households, our seniors, our children, our neighbors with disabilities,” she didn’t provide any state monetary help.
Trump, she mentioned,” is forcing tens of millions of individuals — kids, seniors, veterans, individuals with disabilities — into starvation.”
Her feedback are in sharp distinction to the billions the state has spent in housing, feeding and caring for hundreds of unlawful immigrants who’ve made Massachusetts their residence.
The newest instance is the controversy and value of changing a former West Roxbury nursing residence right into a shelter for 42 immigrant and homeless households over the objection of residents.
Whereas unremarked upon by Democrats, the unlawful immigrant inflow into Massachusetts and the remainder of the nation solely got here to an finish when Trump shut down the border and started rounding up and deporting felony unlawful immigrants.
However like their counterparts in Washington, the Democrats would moderately use the free meals subject as leverage of their battle with Trump.
U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark of Revere, second in command amongst Home Democrats, mentioned as a lot when she mentioned the struggling of households was “one of many few” leverages Democrats had in combating Trump over the spending invoice deadlock spurring the federal government shutdown.
Certainly, the Democrats appear to relish the shutdown within the silly perception that it’s damaging Trump whereas they continue to be innocent.
For example, each Massachusetts Senators Eddie Markey and Elizabeth Warren, the duplicitous duo, have railed towards Trump whereas voting the final 13 occasions to maintain the federal government shut down.
They, in impact, are contributing to the potential disaster of poor individuals going with out meals. But it surely’s all proper as a result of whether it is anti-Trump, individuals be damned.
And whereas the Democrats are at conflict with him, Trump is ending wars across the globe.
Individuals could go hungry, however Democrat politicians received’t miss a meal.
All Trump has to do is sit again and watch. The Democrats are consuming themselves alive.
Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas may be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
