Iowa governor set to slash food and medical benefits while promoting child labor

Two major pieces of legislation in the Iowa Legislature are set to make it to Gov. Kim Reynolds’ (R) desk: One bill that would allow “14-year-olds work six-hour night shifts, 15-year-olds work on assembly lines, and 16- and 17-year-olds serve alcohol,” and another that would introduce new bureaucratic barriers which will cut thousands off Iowans odd from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid. c

It is estimated that the latter will result in 8,000 residents losing their Medicaid insurance and 2,800 will no longer have access to SNAP. The cost of implementing the new welfare standards will cost the state $7.5 million dollars over two years — three times the amount it currently costs to administer SNAP annually in Hawkeye Country. 

Proponents of the bill claim it will cut down on fraud, but only a mere 0.9% of SNAP recipients engage in food stamp grift. 

Meanwhile, the regressive child labor “reforms” are part of a broader national trend to permit children to work longer hours or in dangerous industries like meatpacking and construction. Iowa’s child labor law, according to the investigative outlet More Perfect Union, was cooked up in Reynolds’ office and authored by business lobbyists of the Iowa Restaurant Association.

The bill originally included a provision that would have made businesses that employed child workers “exempt from civil liability” in the case of injury or death at a job site, but this was eventually removed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that more than 150,000 children annually are injured while working — a third of which result in emergency room visits.