Josh Marshall noticed this one, but it's concerning the House GOP's proposed agriculture budget bill. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, House Republicans want to scrap a successful program that gives school lunches to kids in summer school and replace it with an identical program, except for one difference:
It would only provide summer school lunches for rural counties and districts. Not a dime for urban schools.
And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those months when school meals are not available.
Since 2010, the program has operated from an initial appropriation of $85 million, and the goal has been to test alternative approaches to distribute aid when schools are not in session. The White House asked for an additional $30 million to continue the effort, but the House bill provides $27 million for what’s described as an entirely new pilot program focused on rural areas only.
Democrats were surprised to see urban children were excluded. And the GOP had some trouble explaining the history itself. But a spokeswoman confirmed that the intent of the bill is a pilot project in “rural areas” only.
I can't imagine why anyone would call this twist surprising, considering how Republicans feel about "urban" kids, "urban" voters, and "urban" culture. Cause those people don't deserve lunches, that would make them parasites. But real American kids going to summer school to improve themselves out there in farm country, well, of course they do.
Keep up the minority outreach, guys.
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