STEINGARD | The Government Stopped Counting Hungry Kids on Purpose |
For 30 years the U.S. government tracked how many hungry kids were in American households. They stopped in September. The Trump administration says that surveys used to measure child hunger and inform food stamp policy are nothing more than “subjective, liberal fodder” and that they “fear monger.” Yes, “liberal fodder” is in a USDA press release. The survey that was defunded is called the Household Food Security Report. It ran for 30 years under both Republican and Democratic presidents, contained no policy recommendations and is considered the “gold standard” for tracking food insecurity by Harvard researchers.
So why stop counting hungry kids?
Imagine data as the thermometer for gauging the health of the U.S. When there's a problem like child hunger, the thermometer tells us exactly how many kids are without food on their plates. When the government gets rid of the data, they break the thermometer. But breaking the thermometer doesn’t fill empty plates and kids still go to bed hungry. The difference is, when the thermometer is broken, the government can say whatever they want about the health of the U.S. and nobody can check the temperature. Deleting data makes it easier for the government to lie to us.
The Trump administration isn’t the first to delete data. In the 1930s, Soviet Union Premier Joseph Stalin starved millions of Ukrainians. Soon........