House Republicans Want to Ban Universal Free School Lunches
The Republican Study Committee’s annual budget also calls to permanently defund UNRWA and eliminate the National Labor Relations Board.
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.
The budget — co-signed by more than 170 House Republicans — calls to eliminate “the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the School Lunch Program.” The CEP, the Republicans note, “allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”
“Additionally,” the Republicans continue, “the RSC Budget would limit spending in the program to truly needy households.”
So is Congress, but I’d abolish that long before free meals for kids.
You know what would eliminate fraud and abuse of these programs? Making them universal. Kinda hard to defraud a program that everyone gets.
Agreed, and democrats are trying to do that while republicans fight it.
Can I also add: who fucking cares if someone frauds their way to saving the cost of a $2.50 lunch for a child? Feed the damn kids.
We use school lunch as a dumping ground for excess at commodities the USDA buys up to get farm votes, who cares?
They're straight up lying.
"Fraud and Abuse" is a dog whistle for "don't trust those pocs"
I don't understand how you can abuse giving kids a meal at school.....
Double Chickie Nugies.
they're stealin beans!
Sometimes the kid has the wrong skin color
at my school some kids would purchase large amounts of cookies and such using the lunch money provided by their parents
then they would sell these foods in order to get money
How would buying cookies then reselling them get them any more? If there was markup the kids would just buy from the school directly.
I had kids that would do this at my school too. they'd sell them at a loss, technically - see, it was their parents money paying for it, but they would get paid cash by kids for discounted food items. it was essentially a way to launder the money your parent gave the school for your lunches into usable money, with a little bit of a loss yes, but at a big gain in versatility - for any kid, cash in hand is way better than dollar values in a school lunch system.
but I'd much rather have this "fraud" (of the kids' parents maybe lol) than kids go hungry.
and this has nothing to do with the free school lunches either. those were always fixed meals given to you - not "lunch money dollars" you could choose to use as you see fit. so this is just a bunch of greedy old assholes wanting to starve some kids.
Republicans support many things with higher potential for fraud and abuse than school lunch programs. Privatized prisons come to mind.
Right? Like how is this the thing they fight against? Fucking ridiculous.
Who cares? If kids are hungry, feed them. If Congress is hungry, too bad.
Easiest way to stop that would be to just give everyone lunch.