Republicans claim to care about education but deny money for school meals. Surprise! You can't learn on an empty stomach.
How do Republicans push for tax cuts to reward their wealthy donors, deny funds for school meals and say they care about education at the same time. Follow the money to understand Republican hypocrisy.
"Kids need healthy meals to succeed... School groups blame Mitch McConnell for blocking funding school meals for 30 million hungry kids." - Politico
We mapped the number of kids eligible for fee or low cost school meals, the number of children below the poverty line, the 400 richest people in America and the Senators for that state. See how billionaires thrive in America while kids go hungry.
Feeding the future
The National School Lunch Program provides low-cost or free lunches to about 30 million children in 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools (USDA) . "Failure to act will undoubtedly cause students to go hungry and leave school meal programs in financial peril.” - Beth Wallace, president of SNA
"Republicans in Congress want to let down our children and their parents. Instead of continuing to safely provide meals to students during school and over the summer in the Omnibus Bill , Republican leadership has said NO and decided that they prefer to let our kids go hungry. This is a disgrace!”, said Debbie Stabenow , part of Senate Democratic leadership.
Billionaire donors and their Republican Senators
Show the impact of policy decisions
What happens in DC isn't abstract. It decides if your child gets enough to eat at school and what they are allowed to learn. Make it easy for people to see whose interest their Senators really represent. Let people see how many families live in poverty live in their area and how rich is the closest billionaire.
There are two Americas. One for the 1% of the richest who make big donations and dodge paying their fair share of taxes and the other America for the rest of us.
This map has bookmarks which make it easy to jump straight to a Senators state to see the level of hunger, poverty and extreme wealth in that area. This map was created with ArcGIS Online with a special thanks to esri guru, Bern Szukalski for his advice on data sources.
TakeAway: Demand Senators serve the people who elect them, not just donors. Kids shouldn't have to go hungry to fund Republican tax cuts for billionaires.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Image credit: Matt Groening creator of the Simpsons