Just when you thought you’d heard it all… The Obama administration has pushed some strange crusades before at taxpayer expense, but “diaper disparity” Apparently, yes. The White House website features a plea for us all to “take action” on the country’s “diaper divide.” This means pushing federal funding to the tune of $10 million U.S. tax-dollars to get “diapers to families in need.” “Nearly 1 in 3 families struggle to afford diapers for their babies,” reads the March 10 post by Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. “There is also no federal assistance for purchasing diapers, unlike other essentials like food or health insurance.” Worse still, the Obama White has even created a Twitter hashtag — #DiaperGap — for the alleged crisis. In her White House post, Muñoz explained how President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget would address this diaper-divide. CNSNews provides some of the relevant excerpts:
$10 million in taxpayer funds “to test effective ways to get diapers to families in need and document the health improvements that result.
But unless Congress passes that budget, “we don’t have a program to help struggling families buy diapers for their children. So, we’re getting creative and using every tool we have to help solve this problem.”
Munoz notes that many parents order diapers in bulk, for a lower cost, over the Internet. “But the benefits of this new economy aren’t available to all Americans,” she adds.
This can lead to serious health problems for babies and parents. Young children can end up hospitalized with problems like urinary tract or staph infections. Imagine the stress of not being able to afford the basics that your baby needs – not a small matter for struggling parents and caregivers.
When families can’t afford a healthy number of diapers for their babies, they’re faced with a choice between buying diapers and paying for food, rent, or utilities like heat. That’s a choice that no family should have to make. In the worst case, over time these kinds of stressors can contribute to the incidence of abuse and neglect of young children.
Only in the alternate universe of Leftism would a shortage of diapers “lead to child abuse.” What’s more, if parents’ financial situation is so dire, why then would they just not consider using cloth diapers? While as a parent I can’t say I’d like the work and clean-p involved with cloth diapers, it doesn’t change the fact that they are an affordable option out there for financially strapped parents. And it bears mention that generations and generations of children around the world were brought up in cloth diapers without “abuse” or “neglect” or other ill-effect.
Munoz goes on to state that this “diaper disparity” is exasperated by the fact that low-income families do not have transportation to get to stores like Target or Walmart to buy diapers — nor do they have the credit cards or capital to purchase them in bulk on the Internet.
The White House is urging Americans to “spread the word” (#DiaperGap) on social media; find a diaper bank near you; or sign up to become a diaper distributor. And it is urging online retailers, diaper manufacturers and non-profits to expand access to diapers for families in need.
“By calling these companies and non-profits to the table, we are breaking down the barriers to access and harnessing the tools of the new economy so that they can benefit all families,” Muñoz wrote.
No. This isn’t a joke. Just another incident to file under: “Absurdities I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.”
