636

The United States is ruled by literal Captain Planet villains (slrpnk.net)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net to c/memes@slrpnk.net

59 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Source: https://newrepublic.com/post/173668/republicans-declare-banning-universal-free-school-meals-2024-priority

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Interesting. I personally support Universal School Breakfasts / Lunches but what the Republicans want to do here isn't quite as heinous as the headline would have you believe.

You can read the RSC Budget here (PDF Warning) and can find the School Lunch thing on page 34.

What Republicans want is to eliminate CEP in order to force Means Testing for Free / Reduced School lunch. Government Auditors have apparently found a fair bit of fraud in the program and in this case fraud is people who are outside the financial guidelines who have lied about their income in order to get free or reduced cost lunches. The School Districts are complicit with this because the more students they have on the free / reduced lunch program the more federal money they get. You can a lot of that info from the in document citation number 144 which takes you here.

I was surprised to learn that the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Agency in charge of School Meals, spends more than 20 Billion dollars a year on this! There's a great non-partisan Congressional Report on this that you can read here. (PDF Warning).

[-] stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

First, food should be a right.

Second, conservatives and neoliberals love to scream about fraud and abuse of welfare programs, with or without justification, so when I hear somebody claiming that the eeeeeevil public school system is collaborating with eeeeeevil poor people to defraud honest American taxpayers, and I know that conservatives loathe the public school system as much as they loathe poor people, I just roll my eyes.

Third, means testing is not just spiteful and evil, it's routinely used as a weapon to destroy welfare programs, entitlement programs, and social services in general. It's why Republicans keep bringing up means testing social security. When you impose means testing to limit the number of people who directly benefit from a program, you create a division between "us" (the people who pay for a program with taxes) and "them" (poor people who benefit from the program and presumably don't pay taxes). And when a program only benefits poor people it's much easier to stigmatize and ultimately eliminate it.

Fourth, food should be a right.

Fifth, when it comes to what people can actually afford, total income on paper is only one factor - plenty of people with high total income still struggle to buy food for their kids. And frankly I'm not going to second guess people who say they need help paying for their kids' food.

Sixth, you realize I'm posting this on an anarchist instance, right? I suspect very few users here think lying to the government to feed your kids is particularly heinous.

Finally, in case you didn't hear me before, food should be a right.

You are welcome to smear children eating lunch as welfare cheats wasting taxpayer money all you like. And you wouldn't be alone in doing that. But I would ask you to spend some time thinking about the moral implications of making that argument before you distribute it further.