‘No free lunch’ Republican bills taxpayers for his food but tells poor kids to work for theirs

By Travis Gettys/Raw Story

A Georgia Republican who suggested school children do cafeteria work because there’s “no such thing as free lunch” billed thousands of dollars for his own meals to taxpayers.

WSAV-TV found that Rep. Jack Kingston, who’s running for the U.S. Senate, had filed expense reports for as much as $4,182 worth of lunches for his office staff over the past three years.

That could have purchased nearly 2,000 school lunches, reported Talking Points Memo.

Kingston, who opposes the federal school lunch program, drew widespread criticism last month when he suggested children clean school cafeterias or sweep up in exchange for their meals.

“But one of the things I’ve talked to the secretary of agriculture about (is), why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch?” Kingston said. “Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria — and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money, but think what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

That’s a lesson that Kingston apparently hasn’t learned himself.

In addition to his own taxpayer-funded meals, the station reported, the congressman also received $4,289 in free meals billed to third-party groups such as the Georgia Bankers Association and the Congressional Institute.

WSAV reported that Kingston traveled abroad on congressional business at a taxpayer cost of $24,313, which includes more than just meals, and filed expense reports for $145,391 in meals for campaign events.

Watch this video report posted online by WSAV-TV:

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School forces 25 hungry students to throw away lunches when they couldn’t pay

By David Edwards/Raw Story

A group Massachusetts parents are outraged and at least one worker has been placed on administrative leave after about 25 students Robert J. Coelho Middle School in Attleboro were forced to throw away their lunches over concerns that they could not pay for the food.

Parents said that some students cried and went home hungry.

School officials told The Sun Chronicle that Whitson’s, the contractor responsible for providing lunches, made the decision to stop students from eating their lunch if there was not enough credit in the student’s pre-paid account or they were not able to provide cash for the meal.

Superintendent Pia Durkin on Wednesday said that the on-site director had been placed on administrative leave and Whitson’s had been instructed not to deny lunch to any student in the future.

“There is no way any child in my school district will ever go hungry,” Durkin insisted. “Children need to eat.”

A school policy requires that the cafeteria provide a cheese sandwich and milk to any student who cannot pay for regular meals.

“I’m pissed that when there are people in prison who are getting meals, my daughter, an honor student, is going hungry,” parent John Greaves told the paper, adding that he would have brought lunch money to the school if he had been notified.

In a statement provided to WFXT, Whitson’s apologized for the incident.

“We regret that these students were denied meals and agree that this situation should have been handled differently,” the statement said. “We apologize to the students and the community for this incident and are conducting a full investigation.”

Watch this video from WFXT, broadcast April 4, 2013.

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Missouri’s GOP Senate Candidate Says Federal Govt Should Stop Funding School Lunches

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) — who is running for Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-MO) Senate seat — told reporters on Thursday that the federal government should “end its support for school lunch programs,” suggesting that states should fund the effort:

“There’s another good question of who should be doing that,” Akin said during the discussion with reporters. “Is that something the federal government should be doing? I answer it no — why not do it at the state level?” [...]

“I am not against school lunches, but I have a question of whether or not the federal government should be doing many things it is doing, and that would be one I would take a look at.”

In 2011, “more than 31.8 million children each day got their lunch through the National School Lunch Program” — a federally assisted meal program that is currently “operating in over 100,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions.” Under the measure, “children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free meals,” while those “with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for reduced‐price meals, for which students can be charged no more than 40 cents.”

The House Agriculture Committee has marked up a “compromise” version of this year’s farm bill — but it includes cuts to food stamps and the school lunch program. According to the Congressional Budget Office, such reductions could knock 280,000 children off of the free school lunch program. The Senate has adopted a farm bill, but the House has yet to move its version to the floor.

House GOP Would Kick 280,000 Children Off School Lunch Program To Protect Tax Cut For Millionaires

Melissa Boteach/Guest blogger for Think Progress

House Republicans recently proposed cuts to nutrition assistance that will kick 280,000 low-income children off automatic enrollment in the Free School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Those same kids and 1.5 million other people will also lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly food stamp benefits) that help them afford food at home.

Ten years’ worth of these nutrition cuts could be prevented for the price of one year of tax cuts on 3,340 multimillion dollar estates that House Republicans are protecting in their budget.

On April 18 the House Agriculture Committee passed a bill cutting over $33 billion from SNAPover the next decade. About one-third of these cuts ($11.5 billion) comes from putting restrictions on “categorical eligibility,” a provision that enables states to better coordinate between programs and improves access to assistance for low-income families.

By restricting this provision, the bill would kick an average of 1.8 million low-income people a year off of food aid and end automatic enrollment in free school meals for 280,000 children in struggling families.

The Republican budget sells this bill as an effort to “reduce lower‐priority spending” to avert military cuts that will otherwise take place in January 2013 due to the debt deal agreed to last summer. But when it comes to reducing the deficit, it’s clear the House would rather ask low-income kids and families struggling against hunger to foot the bill than asking multimillion-dollar estates to pay their fair share.

Case in point: As part of the 2010 tax-cut compromise, House Republicans insisted on including a tax cut on multimillion dollar estates, adding an estimated $11.5 billion to the deficit this year alone. That’s the same amount they’re now claiming is necessary to cut from low-income families through these restrictions.

By making it more difficult for low-income schoolchildren to access school breakfast and lunch, this bill will likely increase child hunger, which is associated with worse educational outcomes and higher long-term health costs. Both of these trends affect our economy and our deficitsover the long run.

We should reconsider reduced spending on “lower priority” items — a.k.a breakfast, lunch, and dinner for low-income children — and instead adopt a deficit-reduction approach that asks everyone to pay their fair share—including multimillion-dollar estates.