Gov. Maura Healey is true.
No little one In Massachusetts must go hungry after shedding 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 surprising 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 wish to spend state taxpayer cash to make up for cutbacks, lapses and shortfalls in federal funds.
Take Healey’s quote, as an example, in going after Trump on the problem. She mentioned “sitting in Washington is a contingency fund of billions of {dollars} that the president can use to make these funds accessible subsequent week.”
Healey can be sitting on billions of {dollars} in contingency funds that she might make accessible 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.
Presently a dozen United Means organizations have launched a United Response Fund to lift cash to take care of the issue.
Whereas Healey appealed to folks 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 hundreds of thousands of individuals — youngsters, seniors, veterans, folks 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 price 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 reasonably use the free meals problem 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.
As an example, each Massachusetts Senators Eddie Markey and Elizabeth Warren, the duplicitous duo, have railed in opposition to 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 folks going with out meals. However it’s all proper as a result of whether it is anti-Trump, folks be damned.
And whereas the Democrats are at conflict with him, Trump is ending wars across the globe.
Folks might go hungry, however Democrat politicians gained’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 could be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com
