Frankly, when you say you support universal school lunches, but then write paragraphs about how greedy parents are abusing the system to get their kids free lunches, how public schools are complicit in this fraud because increasing the number of kids getting free lunches increases their lunch budget, and how surprised you are by how much the school lunch program costs taxpayers - basically all the standard Republican talking points for abolishing school lunches - and one of your links goes back to a ultraconservative website that calls for abolishing the Department of Education entirely, it makes me doubt that your support for universal school lunches is sincere.

I mean, look, what you’re complaining about is fraud in means testing. People claiming free lunches when they have too much income to be eligible for free lunches. But what we’re talking about is schools where means testing does not happen because everyone gets free lunch. Republicans are looking at schools where universal free lunches are currently implemented. And they’re saying they want to go back to means testing so that parents with higher incomes can’t defraud the system. But if there is no income requirement for free school lunches then nobody is lying about their income to get free school lunches. All your “studies” about parents lying about their income and public schools encouraging parents to lie about their income to get more federal funding are completely irrelevant to the universal programs that the Republicans are trying to cancel. You can’t have fraud in means testing when there’s no means testing. You can’t have public schools padding their free lunch enrollment when everyone is in free lunch by default.

You get it? Let’s assume there’s lots of fraud when free school lunches are means tested. I don’t believe it, but let’s assume it. But if free school lunches are universal and not means tested, there can’t be any fraud. So Republicans are saying “look, let’s add income requirements to a program that doesn’t have income requirements, because then we can do means testing and find lots of fraud”. And why do they want to find lots of fraud? So then they can point at “objective” studies like the ones you cited and use them as excuses to abolish free school lunch programs.

I may be too hair trigger and not giving you the benefit of the doubt. I admit my own biases. I went for entire weeks at a time where those free school breakfasts and lunches were the only thing I had to eat and I react poorly to attempts to abolish them or further penalize their recipients.

And for your part, however, you should recognize that giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt when it comes to welfare programs - specifically, accepting their claims that they’re just trying to fight fraud and abuse in the system - is not typically warranted.