On Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee, of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members, released its 2025 budget entitled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America.” Tucked away in the 180-page austerity manifesto is a block of text concerned with a crucial priority for the party: ensuring children aren’t being fed at school.
Eight states offer all students, regardless of household income, free school meals — and more states are trending in the direction. But while people across the country move to feed school children, congressional Republicans are looking to stop the cause.
Republicans however view the universal version of the policy as fundamentally wasteful. The “school lunch and breakfast programs are subject to widespread fraud and abuse,” reads the RSC’s proposed yearly budget, quoting a report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. The Cato report blames people who may “improperly” redeem free lunches, even if they are technically above the income cutoff levels. The “fraudulence” the think tank is concerned about is not some shadowy cabals of teachers systematically stealing from the school lunch money pot: It’s students who are being fed, even if their parents technically make too much to benefit from the program. In other words, Republicans’ opposition to the program is based on the assumption that people being “wrongly” fed at school is tantamount to abusive waste.
Not to be confused as completely frugal, the Republicans call to finish construction of border wall projects proposed by former President Donald Trump. And not to be confused as focused, the budget includes the word “woke” 37 times.
“It’s students who are being fed, even if their parents technically make too much to benefit from the program. In other words, Republicans’ opposition to the program is based on the assumption that people being “wrongly” fed at school is tantamount to abusive waste.”
TIL that a middle class family benefiting from the tax dollars they pay for is ‘fraud’. Since the rich pay no taxes, they have no right to tell us what to do with our own tax dollars. Simple as. Plus, it’s FOOD in the US, we grow so much that NOT diverting some of the extra crops to school lunches is pure waste.
They only succeed through misery, then blame it on those who suffer the most when that misery come to pass
I’d MUCH rather STARVE hungry kids so Elon Musk can make a couple extra dollars!
-Save The Children Republicans.
My anti abortion friends will say “the problem is they don’t care about the children after they’re born” and then happily go vote for trump again this Nov because their church told them joe Biden is the devil.
Oh, no, no, it’s “Think of the Children”! Saving them requires actual effort.
/s
So they punish the poor for the actions of the rich. Yep, that makes sense.
The
richlower middle class and up aren’t doing anything wrong here. They’re being offered free lunch and their kids are accepting it.I’d rather all get free lunch if they want it. I’m just simplifying their “logic” in my other post. That even if you accept it at face value, it’s dumb as fuck.
Experts on defrauding public services offer insight that public services are easily defrauded but are mum on any solutions that would make it harder to defraud public services. The math maths.
The problem is that any system that involves humans will have some level of waste and corruption. So they will always be able to point to that one kid who got a lunch he wasn’t supposed to as a sign that the whole system should be destroyed.
That’s because the problem from their perspective is that the people who would defraud public services exist, and their rage is high enough that they accept the people who simply use public services as collateral damage.
Bah, who am I kidding… They don’t care about humans. They’re just interested in that money going towards private businesses (Especially if they have a generous lobbyist from and/or stake in said business or industry)
You don’t want to invest in stopping fraud here. The investment costs more than you’d get back, no one is making bank stealing free school lunch. We conceded this before and made life worse for millions of people.
You do want to invest in stopping corporate fraud, because the investments pay off there.
The investment costs more than you’d get back.
It’s a public service, what you get for your investment is the health of the public not lining for your pockets. If the only incentive in stopping fraud is profit then we’re fucked since it’s more profitable to perpetuate the fraud than to end it.
It isn’t the recipients of the free lunch that make bank, it’s the ones that are given a contract, subsidy or grant to provide them that do. All you have to do is be willing to provide a substandard service and any costs that are saved can be folded back into private hands.
Please, be less naive.
Do it.
I will start a free lunch program the next fucking day, I have a whole city full of fucking commies ready to go, I will feed your babies bellies delicious food and I will feed their minds revolutionary proletarian theory. I will teach their parents about Marx and Lenin and Fanon, Luxemburg and Kwame Ture. and we will take this shit over.
Ideologically driven psychos forget how this shit started in the first place. We remember.
Divine rage.
I worked a breakfast grill at a restaurant as a teen and got pretty good at it. I’ll make that kid the most perfect breakfast omelette they’ve ever eaten. And I’ll bring the ingredients if we’re short.
Also worked @a food pantry not long ago, warehouse work mostly but I got to see some of the parents and kids who showed up, long lines out into the northern cold, every day we were open, just to get a day or two’s worth of something to eat.
Anyone who would means-test a kid out of a free school meal, or deny them altogether, is some kind of sociopath monster.
I’ll volunteer if you’re around me lmao
Cheat Sheet:
Is it good? Republicans will want to ban it.
More proof that Republicans don’t care in the slightest about children one they’ve been born.
They care about nobody. What was the last Republican sponsored bill that would objectively make anyone’s life better?
Somehow they have their base frothing at the mouth about these Democrat-led initiatives that help folks (not just Democrats), yet they put forth no proposal to help anyone.
They are the party of taking things away from people not like them, but also the party of taking things away from people just like them. They are not the party of helping anyone. I cannot fathom how the large portion of their base who could be helped by such programs fails to see this.
Literally taking food out of the mouths of children. How is this the party of Christians again?
“Fuck them little shits, let em starve: Money is God.”
-Jesus or something idk
If feeding kids is a red line then there are no red lines.
Republicans hate everyone & everything— except white men
They like the wealthy, most happen to be white males but white men that aren’t rich people that don’t donate to them can use their boot straps. They care about that demographic at elections and most are willing to vote against their interests.
Except white men and controlling the rest, hence the support for a dumb wall
I thought universal meant everyone was entitled it it.
The Panthers need to come back
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Let all children starve lest one go undeservedly fed.
Here’s a cool thought experiment: if you make all student meals free, how can anyone steal food?
You need to think like a libertarian. “If they’re all getting free food they’re all stealing because taxes are theft.”
No, they actively hate the poor, even when the money is donated freely by the rich to pay for their school lunch.
That was a great read. The Onion meets the New Yorker. But how was it free to read? Did Society pay?
No no no, if they’re getting all this food free, it’s because the students are the product rather than the customers.
Ya know, I might be onto something with my bullshit…
