Republican Rep. Rich McCormick Says Free School Lunches Encourage Laziness Among Students

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Georgia) argued against free school lunches after President Donald Trump‘s federal funding freeze, which could threaten nutrition support programs for children like Head Start. He defended the freeze by suggesting that children should work to “produce their own income” and that free school lunch programs would enable them to be freeloaders.

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In an interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, he said he worked while he was in high school and that free lunches give kids “incentives to stay at home and not work.”

“I don’t know about you, but I worked since I was 13 years old. I was picking berries in a field before they had child labor laws that precluded that,” McCormick said. “I was a paper boy! And when I was in high school, I worked my entire way through.”

Subsidized school lunches have been linked to improved academic performance and physical health. They allow students to focus on their school work without leaving their families with financial burdens. 

“We don’t give people value, we don’t give them the ability to dig themselves out when we penalize them for actually working and keep them on welfare. That’s what’s been the inner-city problem for a very long time. We need to have a top-down review so we can get people out of poverty,” he said. He referred to programs that alleviate financial struggles as “incentives to stay at home and not work.”

McCormick insisted that he didn’t believe all students were staying home and not working. “This gives us a chance, though, to see where is the money really being spent,” McCormick said. 

In a memo sent out to federal departments last month, the Trump administration ordered a “pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders” signed by Trump. A longer document was sent to federal agencies requesting details on thousands of programs, including school meals for low-income students. 

According to a program fact sheet from the USDA, children can qualify for free school lunches under the criteria they participate in other federal programs “based on their status as a homeless, migrant, runaway, or foster child.” Children enrolled in Head Start or other programs may be eligible for free meals if they come from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the Federal poverty level.