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.
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.
they're stealin beans!
Sometimes the kid has the wrong skin color
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.
imagine being such a giant fucked up asshole that you think "oh, some people's lives suck a little less so lets fuck over everyone that struggles to feed their kids." is the way to go.
Imagine being such an asshole that you think this guy is doing god's work and should be supported.
It's a Jesus thing, you wouldn't understand
So pathetic. People these days need more Christ in their lives! or else they don't see the compassion and love in *reads notes* taking food from children.
The Republican Party, everyone
I'm just going to say it, all kids deserve free lunch. We can give every kid in Yemen a free bomb but we can't feed our own kids? This place is hell because we stopped simply pulling these people onto the streets and beating them. Its apparent the only thing that keeps the boot out of your mouth is the threat of violence. And even then they've created a system where the military police keep them safe and we're all too busy and poor to do anything else but get to work. I want to do something, too. But if I get arrested my kids go on the street.
If my kid is required by law to be somewhere you better fucking feed them.
That is a really good point. I'm all for free lunches because i know it's something we can do for our people. But you're on to something that i would like to hear a rebuttal to.
Something like "You're free to homeschool your kid." Especially because assholes against this love unmonitored homeschooling
Isn't it funny how any proposal that would harm the interests of seniors is a third rail in US politics, but they can willingly fuck over our children?
Children don't vote, and parents of children that can't afford to pay for school lunches can't donate, or find the hours needed to vote during a work day.
Well-fed children get a better education. Educated adults are less likely to vote Republican
America eats its young.
These kinds of programs are important in high poverty districts. Super transient population - sometimes students might attend for a couple of weeks and then disappear. Parents don’t speak English, or can’t read, so they can’t fill out the paperwork to get their kid on the free lunch program. Many of these kids come to school TO eat - when COVID shut my district down the schools were kept open as feeding sites. We provided breakfast and had a school food pantry.
I don’t think people understand how many children would starve without free lunch programs.
Republican compassion
hey kid, give me your money (I will send it to oil companies)
I'm cool with it if we also ban free breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and gym access for Congress.
Because house repubs are trash.
Republicans are radicalizing the population and it’s exactly what Putin wants
Kinda unrelated but holy balls did you see that Tucker Carlson crap in Russia? The interview and the several videos after that... It is the most blatant ridiculous propaganda I've seen in a long time and it's strange. That combined with the crazy amount of Russian bots on those videos puts you in such a weird weird environment it's crazy
He even says
Lmao usually they try to be just a smidge more sneaky with the propaganda
Putin made fun of Carlson afterward for asking such weak questions. I mean, I'd serve up softballs too if the alternative came with a risk of unexpected acute polonium exposure, but it's still humiliating for Carlson.
I did see that. It was crazy.
I think Putin has the goods (kompromat) on Tucker, Elon, Dershowitz, Trump, and most of the Congressional Republicans. Probably all were avid frequenters of Epstein island.
I think it's less blackmail and more just knowing what buttons to push. Tucker needs attention, he's that kid saying "look at what I can do" but grown up and completely lacking ethics. If you offer him a platform and reach he'll agree to anything.
Remember Matt Gaetz attempting to blackmail him in an extremely awkward interview, which Tucker subsequently changed the subject on and ended the interview?
I bet he’s a freak and Putin has the goods.
They are nothing but ghouls
I say we eliminate the CEP and make breakfast and lunch free for all kids in public school.
House Republicans would ban school all together if they could.
It’s a good thing that there aren’t enough of them to pass a fart let alone this bill
Have you seen/heard some of their fellow elected officials? I'm pretty sure some are just congealed farts using air pressure to make noise.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The program thus relieves both schools and families from administrative paperwork, removing the inefficiencies and barriers of means-testing, all on the pathway to feeding more children and lifting all boats.
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 “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.
Its annual budget is not binding, but it does offer a useful window into conservatives’ policy priorities, which can best be summarized as accelerating the planet’s burning, an indifference to mass shootings, and actively threatening consumers and workers.
On reproductive rights, Republicans call for the passage of an array of anti-choice bills, like Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles’s “Ending Chemical Abortions Act of 2023,” which would federally outlaw the use of abortion pills, and West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney’s “Life at Conception Act,” which would designate embryos made through in vitro fertilization as being alive — even as many of the same Republicans have scrambled to claim they support IVF in the aftermath of a similar Alabama Supreme Court ruling that led multiple clinics to halt IVF procedures.
Other Republican budget priorities include eliminating all future funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to Palestinian refugees; prohibiting federal subsidies for high-speed rail; getting rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; reducing funding for the famously under-supported Occupational Safety and Health Administration; and eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, which, under President Joe Biden, has done much to protect workers’ right to organize.
The original article contains 1,331 words, the summary contains 297 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Maybe they should spend that budget dropping School lunches from drones in Israel? Is that the proposal? Maybe sell the lunches and support Trump with his new con-job, whatever that is this time. Maybe he's building beach front condominiums down in Baja California again?
Carlson: what's the big deal? We all know there's no such thing as a free lunch program, anyway.