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PEP Jul-Aug 2014
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Public Employee Press

Empty souls: Right-wingers vs. hungry children



By LAURA REYES
Secretary-Treasurer, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (DC 37's 1.6 million-member parent union)

IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE far-right political ideology becoming so twisted that one of its standard bearers would step up to a podium and say poor children are better off going hungry.

Yet when Republican Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference this spring, he did just that. Bashing federally funded school lunch programs, he accused those of us who are uncomfortable with children going hungry of offering them "a full belly and an empty soul."

In service of this deeply troubling belief, he told a story about a boy who asked for his school lunch in a brown paper bag like his classmates, because that - according to Ryan - meant their parents cared about them.

Ryan's politics dictates that it's better for a child to go hungry than get help. Paul Ryan's politics says parents who rely on public assistance don't care about their children. Ryan's politics says those who are down on their luck, even children, are soulless - not the Wall Street bankers who crashed our economy and crush American working families.

Ryan's story wasn't even true. The politician - who was a serial fibber during his failed 2012 campaign for vice president - said this story came from a Wisconsin Republican who testified before Congress last year that she met the boy in the story. That was a lie. She yanked the story out of a book.

Right-wing lie

Here we have the classic right-wing talking point: It pushes shameful policy, it conveys utter disdain for Americans in need of help, and it's based on a lie.

Ryan told the dishonest tale to fire up the ultra-conservative ground troops to support a proposed 2014 budget that takes billions from federal programs that fight childhood hunger. That includes a proposed cut of $137 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps), including $63 billion specifically allocated for child nutrition.

It was a red-meat speech from the leader of a political movement hell bent on leaving nothing for the poor and middle class.

And if you think these politicians might blink at actually taking food from children's mouths - Ryan and his colleagues have already done it.

Last year, their federal sequester eliminated 750,000 mothers and children from the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program that provides baby formula for infants and food for children. And their latest budget only raised funding for school meals by 6 cents, which doesn't keep pace with rising food costs and new requirements. Even worse, there was no increase at all for meals in Head Start and child care programs.

I don't need statistics to tell me how perverse Ryan's politics of attacking children and their parents is. I know what it's like to live on the margin in this country. As a single mother making far too little as a home care provider, I once had to rely on federal assistance programs to help feed my children.

As AFSCME members, we work with children every day - in schools, in day care, in city and state programs. We see the effects of childhood hunger. Unlike Ryan, we don't obsess about cutting government at all costs, even if it makes children go hungry. We figure out how to make government work for everybody, not just the wealthy few.

If we've ever had to rely on help to feed them, we see our own children. If we are fortunate to never need such help, we see and this would really be a stretch for politicians like Ryan, our neighbors' children, and we act not out of self-interest, but because we care about the most vulnerable in our community.

We see that a program ensuring that children have full bellies is in fact the heart and soul of America. To see otherwise is perverted politics. To see otherwise is soulless.



 
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