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.
That’s disgusting. If society decides someone is too dangerous to live in society, they must pay for that person to be separated from society. This is a natural check on BS laws that would otherwise be used to justify slavery.
So I consider that practice to be a violation of the eighth and the thirteenth amendments. I also think the exemption from forced labor as punishment for a crime is immoral, and argue the convicted should always be given an alternative to labor (e.g. community service as an alternative to a fine or incarceration). If not, there’s a perverse incentive for jails to keep prisoners past their original sentence with additional charges heaped on top.
My state fortunately bans forced labor, and generally has decent policies around pay-to-stay. From my search, only those with a paycheck at the time of incarceration pay in some areas, and in another area, income earned in prison may be withheld to pay restitution for their victims. But AFAIK, nowhere in my state unconditionally charges fees. So I think we’re doing better, but I’ll look and see if the are movements to eliminate the fees we have.