this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Also, your source for fraud in the school lunch program comes from a site that advocates canceling all federal food aid programs, including WIC, food stamps, etc, as well as shutting down the Department of Education entirely, so, yeah, a little bit of a bias there. ๐คฎ
It isn't "my" source. It's taken directly from the RSC Budget document. I even specified the citation number and page.
I understand the bias issue you are raising but you need to understand that they didn't come up with that fraud number, the GAO did. If you look at that section they (again not me, they) have citation number 41 which will take you to the actual GAO Report that was done during the Obama Administration.
In 2012 the USDA itself estimated that there was nearly 1 Billion dollars of "NSLP certification errors". The report used "NSLP certification errors" while the RSC Budget referred it as "fraud" but it amounts to the same thing, people using the benefits who would have been financially ineligible if closer tracking and means testing was being performed.
Unsurprisingly the USDA itself concluded that in order to stop the certification errors that they'd need to implement income verification...so that the means testing rules could actually be implemented.
So what you are seeing in regards to Free / Reduced Student Meals is that the Federal Government itself, under a Democratic President, saw that there was an issue to be addressed.
Republicans want to address the issue by giving the means testing some teeth. I would prefer that they fix it by making it universally free for all students all the time. We see the same problem, we just have different solutions.
Which literally just ultimately harms children. Parents commit fraud to get their kids free lunch? Now the kids get to starve and potentially be forced into the foster care system that is rife with abuse.
If the parents are committing fraud because they make too much money to qualify for the program wouldn't that mean if the parents were exposed then denied program benefits they would have enough money to feed their kids anyways?
I guess I don't understand why it means kids would starve? Is the assumption the parents are evil negligible people who will refuse to feed their children if they can't cheat the system to have their kids fed for free?
Parents who need the help still get the help and kids still eat. Parents who lied about needing the help will no longer get it and feed their kids themselves so kids still eat.
Where is starvation coming into play? And where has your foster care comment come from? I don't understand.
Very likely not. Often means testing ignores context. Like, for example, they may technically make enough money to disqualify but have medical or student debt.
There's a history in the US of lunches being physically taken away from students in such situations as well as denying diplomas for "lunch debt".
If this were approached like other efforts, like Florida's LGBTQ+ suppression laws, it may be explicitly part of the law. Otherwise, if it carries a sentence involving jail time, it would be an implicit one.
You defended the republicans so that makes you hate trans people/s
But seriously now, its fucked up that you are getting downvoted and bashed for calling out the lies of the article.
Rigth now it shows very much that theres a lot of people that are very on board with that line of thinking.
I have no idea why this has been hapening so much recently. If you even sugest that people should work thogeter, regardles of what groups of people you are talking about, it inmediatly gets defaulted by some asshole into their american blue vs red bullshit culture wars, and start attacking you.
I know that doesnt have much to do with this case but what im trying to get across is that theres a lot of people eager to label you their enemy and fight you, regardles of the subject at hand.
And while im aware that most of the new lemmy users are mostly reddit lefty americans, i dont recall them being this rabid befor, i have a theory that the partisian shills have goten to lemmy recently, be it any 3 lether agency or just political campaing hires, but the ambience has been stinkingly more fish rothen recently.
My recomendation is to dont try to reason with these guys since not only they dont deserve it and are not going to listen, but they to are here just to shit on you. So just move on.