WACO, Texas (KXXV) \u2014 Texas\u2019 top AG official said one of his biggest worries during the federal government shutdown is for families and school children, adding his office has a plan in place to make sure school children are fed if the shutdown lingers beyond the first of the year. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think this shut down will go to the first of the year. I hope not. We could get in trouble then,” Texas AG Commissioner Sid Miller said.<\/p>\n
Watch the full story here:<\/p>\n
Texas’ AG commissioner talks funding food banks and school meal programs during government shutdown<\/p>\n
Miller said he’s also worried about SNAP recipients and while that is not governed by Texas’ Dept. of Agriculture, his office wanted to help those in need right now. <\/p>\n
Miller told 25 News’ Bobby Poitevint the department has sent out almost $20 million to help out our area food banks during the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n
Right now there are more than 3 million Texas school children that get free or reduced lunch through the USDA’s National School Lunch Program.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexas Department of Agriculture, we run the school nutrition program, school lunch, school breakfast, of course that\u2019s all part of the government shutdown,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n
The USDA reimburses states for school meal programs.<\/p>\n
Multiply reports including, Texas Public Radio<\/a>, School Nutrition Association<\/a>, Feeding America<\/a>, highlight those operations have not been impacted and are expected to continue through November and beyond during the federal government shutdown. <\/p>\n The Department of Agriculture told Texas Public Radio and confirmed with 25News the following statement.<\/p>\n “The USDA informed states that they’ll be releasing incremental funding to keep school meal reimbursements ongoing. That would include November and beyond.”<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been through this before. It\u2019s not my first rodeo as they say. I have funds held back in anticipation of things like this happening – the workers paid and all the children fed at least through the first of the year,” said Miller. <\/p>\n The School Nutrition Association is a nationwide nonprofit who’s reporting that $23 billion in Section 32 tariff funds were transferred to the USDA\u2019s Child Nutrition Program accounts to help a wide variety of programs during the shutdown.<\/p>\n On its website, the USDA has not made a public comment about school meal programs being impacted by the shutdown.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the main thing to know is, I\u2019m gonna keep those school children fed even through the shutdown,\u201d Miller added.<\/p>\n Follow Bobby on social media!<\/p>\n More stories from Bobby Poitevint<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WACO, Texas (KXXV) \u2014 Texas\u2019 top AG official said one of his biggest worries during the federal government…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23524,2439,5466,17246,2360,4826,23525,27,29,28,5876],"class_list":["post-37544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-ag","tag-commissioner","tag-lunch","tag-miller","tag-school","tag-shutdown","tag-sid","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-usda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}