Paul Ryan Says Free School Lunches Give Kids ‘An Empty Soul’

Ryan, a Republican, is either incredibly stupid or incredibly evil, or both.
When I was unemployed, I wanted a job so I could pay for my own bills. That doesn't mean I didn't want to get unemployment while I was out of work, so I could eat and have a place to live while I was looking for a job. Sleeping in my car and eating out of trash cans would have hurt my dignity far more than getting unemployment.
Ryan's statement is even more repulsive because the Republicans blocked, as much as they could, measures to shorten the recovery from the recession, because they expected they could make President Obama look bad and hoped that would gain them the presidency in 2012.
And the Republicans have blocked efforts to increase the minimum wage, and other measures to reverse the declining wages of the working poor and middle class, for the sake of continually increasing the profits of the top 0.01%

http://time.com/14887/paul-ryan-free-school-lunch-empty-soul/

Eliana Dockterma
Marc 6, 2015

Paul Ryan says that free lunches provided to children by government programs give kids “a full stomach — and an empty soul.”

In a speech he made at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the country’s largest gathering of conservative leaders and activists, Thursday, he shared this story he heard from Eloise Anderson, who serves in the cabinet for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:

She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch — one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.

He went on to say that “the Left” doesn’t understand this desire for dignity, not just comfort.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/06/1282611/-Paul-Ryan-Poor-kids-should-go-hungry-so-they-know-they-re-loved

[I love this headline on the subject:]

Paul Ryan: Poor kids should go hungry so they know they're loved

Hey, maybe if we take that kid's free school lunch away, his parents will be able to scrounge up a brown paper bag to send him to school with every day. It'll be empty, like his stomach, but whatever, brown paper bag = love.

What the left doesn't understand, apparently, is that this child should go hungry because it's been made clear to him that being poor means his parents somehow love him less. Trust Ryan to miss the pathos of a child having been taught this. And what about kids whose parents send them to school with lunch money, not brown paper bags, because both of their parents work and do not have time to be packing a lunch every day? Ryan's version of parental love doesn't make room for them either. What else might he require for a family to qualify as loving—a mother who meets the kids at the door after school bearing freshly baked cookies?

If you're middle class and living a 1950s sitcom lifestyle, there's room for you in Paul Ryan's vision of non-empty souls. But, as poll after poll shows, American voters prefer a Democratic vision of a higher minimum wage, unemployment aid, Social Security, and a host of other programs that Ryan's "empty soul" rhetoric is designed to cheapen.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/

Fact Checker
A story too good to check: Paul Ryan and the tale of the brown paper bag

By Glenn Kessler March 6, 2014

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Did Eloise Anderson, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, ever meet such a child?

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Okay, so Anderson had testified about this boy, and claimed that she had spoken to him

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But the story doesn’t end there. Wonkette, a satiric blog, wondered if Anderson’s story was actually derived from a 2011 book titled “The Invisible Thread,” by Laura Schroff, which is about a busy executive and her relationship with an 11-year-old homeless panhandler named Maurice Mazyck. His mother was a drug addict, in jail, who had stolen things and cashed in food stamps to pay for drugs. At one point, Schroff offers to bring Mazyck lunch every day so he won’t go hungry.

•••••

This actually seemed a little strange. Could the tale told in congressional testimony really be drawn from a book? It did not make much sense in part because Schroff and Mazyck are partnering with a group called No Kid Hungry to help end childhood hunger in the United States. One key part of the program is connecting hungry kids with federal programs such as school lunches and food stamps. The group also opposed Ryan’s 2013 budget for its proposed reductions in the food stamp program.

•••••

So we asked Anderson when she met this boy and heard his story. Joe Scialfa, communications director for the department provided us with this answer:

In the course of giving live testimony, Secretary Anderson misspoke.

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It’s important to note that there is no discussion in the book about the school lunch program, and we could find no interview with Mazyck in which he said that.

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Anderson, in congressional testimony, represented that she spoke to this child — and then ripped the tale out of its original context.

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