If House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was expecting a thank you from the Freedom Caucus and other Republican nihilists for capitulating to them and agreeing to renege on the debt ceiling agreement he made with President Joe Biden, he doesn’t know the extremists: Of course they’re not happy. They don’t necessarily know what they want, but they do know they want to raise hell about it. And as usual, the likeliest victims are the most vulnerable Americans.
What this means is that all the big must-pass bills besides the 12 appropriations bills are going to be a massive fight, none more so than the reauthorization of the farm bill, and with it the fight that the extremists are still mad about: food assistance. That includes again trying to force everyone getting SNAP aid to prove they’re working, and also banning universal free school meals.
The extremists don’t think the concessions McCarthy made to them are good enough and want to make sure, in the words of Florida Man Rep. Matt Gaetz, that they aren’t using “budgetary gimmicks” to move money around, but are actually taking it away from programs. Like the Community Eligibility Provision in the National School Lunch Program. The budget released by the Republican Study Committee, which comprises the hardest-right 175 or so House members, rescinds the program that provides for universal free school meals in areas that qualify economically.
It’s not that huge of a program now, but it does mean that in low-income areas, school meals are available to all the kids and none of them have to be ashamed or subject to school authorities embarrassing them in front of their schoolmates, by, for instance, ripping food away from them because they have school lunch debt. It also means that all of the kids receive at least one or two nourishing meals every day and are ready to learn.
That program is run by the Food and Nutrition Service, part of the Department of Agriculture, and is just one of many programs that will need to be reauthorized in the farm bill. So is SNAP, as the food stamp program is now called. The hardliners among the House Republicans are still mad that McCarthy “watered down” his demands for work requirements in the debt ceiling deal, and they are going to demand to be appeased this time. McCarthy has supposedly told his more reasonable colleagues that they’ll have to appease the extremists, and at least fight for tougher restrictions.
Plenty of House Republicans don’t want to hear that.