Prem Thakker of The Intercept takes a look at the blueprint of the Republican mind:
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.”
…THE REPUBLICAN STUDY Committee is the largest ideological caucus in Congress, and for the past 51 years, it has served as a principle priority-setter for the party. The committee was chaired as recently as three years ago by House Speaker Mike Johnson. He and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise still sit on the Executive Committee, while Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern serves as chair. 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.
Truer words…
As Thakker notes, however, the budget also targets the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) from the federal School Lunch Program. This is a provision that allows over 3,000 school districts and tens of thousands of schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students without respect to their parents’ financial situation. These districts have such a high percentage of needy students that it’s administratively simpler to just waive the eligibility requirement to reduce paperwork and hassle for both staff and families.
But free food for all students is an idea that is catching on, and that is in part why the House Republicans are so alarmed about the CEP.
Republicans have worked for years to undermine school lunch programs, but the staying focus on the goal, even in rhetoric, is notable given the warm reception some states have received in instituting universal school lunch. In Minnesota, for example, 70 percent of Minnesotans, including 57 percent of conservatives and 54 percent of senior citizens, were found to have approved of the policy change that took effect last summer — even after reports that the program was proving to be more costly than anticipated, due to greater-than-expected demand. Statewide polling in Pennsylvania last year found 82 percent of people supporting expanding their free school breakfast program to include lunch too, while 87 percent of Ohio K-12 parents were found in 2022 to support school meals for all, regardless of ability to pay.
Another seven states — California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and Vermont — have also passed universal school lunch programs, while at least 26 more states (including Washington, D.C.) are considering ways to achieve the policy too.
This isn’t the craziest idea. We don’t ask public school families to prove they’re poor before we provide their children with a laptop. Why should we worry about the cost of a bowl of cereal, some fruit and yogurt or a sandwich? Students do better if they’re not hungry, so why not just provide food for all students?
Most districts are funded by property taxes meaning that rich people are already paying a lot into the public schools, so letting their kids get a free meal isn’t something they should find so upsetting. But some people would rather pay extra to ensure that no one gets something they haven’t earned. That’s why we have a right wing to our politics. Assholes need to stick together, am I right?
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, it’s not just “accelerating the planet’s burning, an indifference to mass shootings, and actively threatening consumers and workers” that defines the GOP. They also want hungry kids.
5
As has been stated often with regard to the GOP, the cruelty is the point.
In a given school district, the people who have more expensive property pay more in taxes. Of course they’re the ones who will pay lawyers to contest their assessment to lower taxes. And, more importantly, they’ll move to their own enclaves and have their own school district. Redlining and white flight were a real things, and the affected schools are still suffering from loss of tax base all these years later.
The Republican Party also thinks it’s perfectly cool to lunch shame kids (preparing a meal for a student and then dumping it in the trash when they can’t pay), so I expect nothing less from them.