As states across the country move to make sure students are well fed, Republicans have announced their intention to fight back.

“There is no such thing as a free lunch”, they said :(

To pull more of the article into the comment section:

The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

Of note is that the CEP is not even something every school participates in; it is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.

It’s the kind of provision that many would want every school to participate in. Why not guarantee all our children are well fed as they learn and think about our world and their place in it, after all?

You know, I try to keep an open mind and try to understand how the other side could come to the conclusions they do, but sometimes they really make it difficult. I genuinely don’t get how this could be construed as anything other than malicious. What’s the benefit in this? How is this “thinking of the children?” How did a political party come to represent views that are so aggressively anti-humanity? It’s such a bizarre platform to attach yourself to so proudly and openly.

Ah, student loans are, in fact, a problem. One-time relief of student debts is a good thing - provided there are no new debts on such a scale and the mechanism changes after that.

Charity sponsorship of students is a good thing without doubt. Private stipends are a good thing. But when loans which are not going to be returned in a normal way are becoming that common, then something is wrong and should be fixed, not poured more money into.

They are a cause of inflation in education (which, of course, harms the students as well), of people like AOC talking and being listened about economics, because on paper they would be qualified, and so on.

Mister_Haste
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I imagine they twirled their mustaches and maniacally laughed while announcing this. How much more cartoonishly villainous can they get?

Kaberu
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31Y

Have they started tying women to train tracks yet? I feel like that might be a literal next step at this point.

Mister_Haste
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11Y

I can just picture Ted Cruz covering his mouth and Muttley laughing while children starve.

Marxism-Fennekinism
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Pro-life, pro-child, pro-family values 👍🤗💖💯

More orphans for the the orphan crushing machine

The machine needs to be fed.

Meanwhile, they literally get free lunch. It’s some ridiculous stipend over $100 a day. Tax corporations and the 1%, no never. Starving children though, excellent idea. Can’t get kick backs from a single parent who’s struggling. Plus we can use the money we saved to give Uvalde another armored vehicle. That’ll help the children. We are truly screwed.

@BrewJajaja@lemmy.ml
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Why would they alienate their voter base that mainly reside in impoverished red states? A portion of those poor brainwashed right-wingers have children too.

Can you guys see the parallel with a certain spiteful CEO who is the reason for our exodus…

arefx
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They know their voter base is too dumb and enraged by right wing propaganda to realize they are voting against their interests.

that’s a weird priority to have… even weirder to be so proud to announce it

The cruelty is the point with Republicans. The cruelty always has been the point. The cruelty always WILL be the point.

Just normal GOP evil.

Shhalahr
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11Y

What. The. Fuck. Is wrong. With. These people?

end0fline
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11Y

It is just so incredibly odd to me. I grew up in a baptist church (would never step foot in one again.) The people there genuinely seemed to do good work, caring for the poor, donating toys to children, food as well. I do not understand where this push from the right came from. This is incredibly cruel and inhumane.

UnderlyingLogic
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It’s just cruel. A disgusting, cruel mindset from those who genuinely just want to hurt others.

Anyone supporting this lacks the most basic of morals. There is no excuse for this.

Literally everyone in this comment section is missing “regardless of the individual eligibility of each student”. Everyone is getting hysterical over something that isn’t even in the cards.

Of course a lot of kids rely on free school lunches and they aren’t trying to take that away. They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.

alyaza [they/she]
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01Y

They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.

i honestly have to ask here: who cares if the children of people who can afford to feed their kids benefit from this policy? means testing is dumb in basically all circumstances, you can’t count on parents to do this (and if a child goes to school without a lunch they should still be able to eat!), and even if you don’t care about those considerations the policy as a whole is basically a budgetary rounding error. this isn’t the F-35 program, your tax dollars aren’t being thrown into a black hole because someone with an income of $100,000 has a child also being fed by universal school lunch.

@Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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If you want to make that argument, great! I pretty much agree. What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”. I guarantee you that everyone here will also claim to be super concerned about how far political rifts have become. Republicans do a lot of awful shit but this is just choosing to characterize people as deeply cruel villains for the sake of entertainment. I can’t blame “casual conservatives” from looking at responses like this and deciding that their characterization of the left as overzealous is completely true.

alyaza [they/she]
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01Y

What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”.

okay but they kinda do. you are giving charitability to people (Republican politicians in Congress) who have clearly demonstrated they do not deserve it and that what they want is for people to be worse off–whether they accept that or not. more children starving because free school meals are restricted to certain income groups is possibly the most straightforward cause-and-effect outcome there can be. the benefits of having them (without means testing) are also undisputable. we literally just had those for two years without issue during the pandemic.

@Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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No, see, this is a willful mischaracterization of their ignorance. These are people who are convinced that parents who can afford their feed their children just will if they lack other options. The idea that some would simply choose not to anyways or that means testing is often faulty is further than they’ve ever actually thought about it. Still cartoonishly evil? Yeah, but it’s not “haha I sure do love kids not eating”, it’s a lack of empathy of a different sort. Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem. It will only convince them that your position is based on a strawman. We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.

alyaza [they/she]
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Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem.

too bad? literally just don’t advocate for policy that’ll starve children if you don’t want to be accused of making children starve–again, we had universal, non-means tested meals in this arena for two years and nobody complained about it then. if you’re the type of person who objects now, i don’t think that’s worth coddling–i think it’s worth begin honest, which is that it’s a policy that leads to more starving children and it’s a deeply inhuman policy overall. you should feel bad for agreeing with it as a person.

We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.

as for this legislatively: me trying to nicely appeal to a Republican legislator is never going to make them see reason here and not starve children. these people are bad, their policy is worse, and trying to coddle them in particular is a waste of time. they know what they’re doing.

This whole reply makes me even more negative towards the future of humanity than I was. Discourse like this is exactly why things are as bad as they are.

/JJ
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imagine being in the strategy meeting with your team, when they suggest a play based on suspending withdrawing food from child would go well with your voters.

imagine agreeing to go with it. getting a speech written about it and one day standing at the lectern to say in front of crowd of assembled people “it is not our responsiblity to feed children”. and then pausing for applause and going home and telling your spouse, “today went great”.

in this supply chain of inhumanity, there were so many opportunities for the heart to say “yo…something is off here…cant quite put my finger on it…but it doesnt seem…right ?.”

to sail through all those checkpoints of human decency, and go through with it, is nothing less than psychopathy.

Bri Guy
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what they fail to understand is that for poorer communities, kids rely on these lunches for meals when their families can’t afford to buy food

“those deadbeat parents should’ve got an abortion if they can’t feed their kid” --republicans probably

Storksforlegs
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The fact that its been so normalized to be this openly shitty and callous toward frigging children… i dont even know how to react to this any more.

Im not saying its hopeless, but I feel like a lot of people on the “lets not let children go hungry” side of the fence are almost left speechless by these idiots. But i feel like thats almost part of their strategy - stunning the opposition. There has to be a better response.

What’s the best way to respond to this kind of brazen cruelty? (Besides voting and campaigning for candidates who arent sociopathic).

What’s the best way to respond to this kind of brazen cruelty?

Voting is a must. Political apathy is how this stuff happens. Outside of voting, just being vocal about your distaste for these policies might help let people around you know that not everyone supports this. And if you come face to face with someone who is outspoken in their belief that some children deserve to starve, then you know who to avoid being around.

More people voted for trump after his disastrous 4 years in office than did when he first got elected. I don’t think voting is the answer because we are stupid. Educating these idiots would go a long way, but they don’t believe in education. Being controlled by their extended, daily, two minute hate is all they seem to know or want.

I taught at a couple school where the majority of the students got their only 2 meals a day when at school. And these fuck heads think that’s too much. It makes me sick.

Listen, this is hard thing for me to type but I think is relevant to the Republican mindset. Hundreds of children are being murdered in their classrooms. Literal murder. Of children. This is not enough to sway Republicans on gun control. If actual murder of 6 year olds doesn’t have any effect on them, surely 6 year olds being hungry is not even going to make them blink. This is the reality with these people. They simply do not care about you, or your children, and everything they do is governed only by money and power.

Why do they prioritize money and power over the welfare of society? What makes them think it’s a good idea? ~Cherri

@polygon@beehaw.org
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Because that is the goal of any totalitarian regime. You think Putin has the welfare of his country in mind? Or Kim Jong Un? No. Money and Power is the only goal. There was an article recently on North Koreans saying how they’re starving and just waiting to die. The people are simply the means to generate wealth and exercise power. Their welfare has nothing to do with it.

I used to think the Republicans were wannabe dictators, but in the last few years they’ve demonstrated that they are actual fascists and a dictatorship is their endgame. There is no way to deny this anymore. If someone tells you who they are, you should listen to them. Republicans are no longer hiding it.

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