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.

  • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    198 months ago

    Where are we going to get the money to balance the budget? Out of the mouth of babes, apparently.

    I just checked with my k-12 schools. Breakfast is about $2 based on level of schooling, while lunch is around $3. At that point, I kind of wonder if it’s really worth it collecting the money when it probably does little to collect revenue. Just make it easier for everyone.

    • @SSJ2Marx@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      158 months ago

      I bet there are a bunch of programs where the overhead of means testing and collecting payments is enough that it would actually be cheaper to just make it a universal benefit.

      • @pingveno@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        98 months ago

        Exactly. There’s a lot of infrastructure that goes into payment. It’s also another thing that low income parents have to deal with.