Democratic governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz,
has signed a universal school meals bill into law helping thousands of
food insecure children get access to food through their public schools.
Let's watch.
>> Now law.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Wow, my eyes, And my legs hurt too.
[NOISE] >> Now,
just contrast that with Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders,
[LAUGH] essentially deregulating child labor laws in Arkansas, so
literal children can engage in some heavy labor.
I mean, if you saw the images coming from that signing when she was signing that
bill into law, kids didn't look so happy.
But anyway- >> Yeah.
>> Now under the new legislation in the state of Minnesota,
the students will have access to free breakfast and lunch will be provided to
all K through 12 students regardless of their parents' income.
Now, it makes Minnesota just the fourth state in the country to do so
following the lead of California, Maine, and Colorado.
Schools must, by the way, enroll in the federal program for
free and reduced priced meals to qualify.
Under the bill, the state would pick up the tab for
the cost difference of covering everyone else who doesn't qualify.
Now, last week, we shared the details on how poor you would have to be in order
to qualify for free school lunches, you'd have to live 130% below the poverty line.
And that's incredibly low, I mean, if you make a little bit of money,
you don't qualify for the school lunch, but making a little bit more money than
that is clearly not enough to be able to pay the expenses associated with housing,
inflated grocery costs, inflated energy costs.
And then on top of that, get no help from the government,
especially when it comes to something like free lunches.
Now, Walz said of the bill, as a former teacher,
I know that providing free breakfast and lunch for our students is one of the best
investments we can make to lower costs, support Minnesota's working families, and
care for our young learners and the future of our state.
This bill puts us one step closer to making Minnesota the best state for
kids to grow up, and I'm grateful to all of the legislators and advocates for
making it happen.
Cenk last week on Wednesday,
I covered a story where Ben Shapiro was talking about school lunches.
And he's like, I don't think school lunches really make much of a difference
in ending child hunger and if parents aren't feeding their kids and their kids
are hungry, then child protective services should come in and take them.
>> Yeah.
>> Which by the way, real cost effective, I just [LAUGH].
>> Yeah, that's actually gonna get to one of the pieces of bad news here.
But overall, this is very good news and I love that we're covering the story.
First of all, that was a beautiful warm moment there, very,
very rare one in American politics.
>> Yes.
>> And by the way, why do we have that beautiful, warm moment?
Because a rare politician delivered for actual human beings.
>> Yes.
>> So they were like, they were overjoyed.
It's probably the first time in their, let alone the kids,
their parents probably the first time in their lives that a politician's
actually delivered something meaningful.
So thank you, Tim Walz, that's how you do it, right?
And the second, No,
the good news is that he delivered and that kids now won't go hungry, right?
The bad news is, look at how much they have devastated public schools that
a great majority of the students in Minnesota, California, etc., those
public school systems need assistance just to be able to eat lunch or breakfast.
The great majority.
So wait a minute, is the great majority of the population that poor,
that much under the poverty line?
>> Yes.
>> So, first of all, partly the answer is yes, and
the corporate media does a great job of covering that up with these examples
of spectacular wealth as if that's normal.
When in reality, an enormous percentage of the country would go bankrupt if they just
had a $400 problem in their bank account.
The second problem is, all the rich kids already went to private schools-
>> Yap.
>> So they already took all the money and ran.
And they've been taking money out of the system ever since from the public
schools until they're decimated, right?
So, this is a tiny bit of good news going in the right direction, but we're in this
whole, because they allowed privatization to run wild in the school system.
>> Here I'll give you an example.
Now, under the old system in Minnesota, if you don't have the money to pay for
your school lunch, if the student's hungry, they might get the lunch, but
then they owe a debt to the school, right?
So Darcy Stueber who serves as the Public Policy Chair of
the Minnesota School Nutrition Association says her district is seeing
just over $80,000 in school lunch debt at this point in the year,
so there is a definite need families in her area have for this bill.
She says many of those struggling to pay are single income households
that work hard, don't make enough to pay for meal programs, but
make too much to qualify for free meals.
So you would have to make about $29,900 or
less per year in household income in order to qualify for the school lunches.
But luckily now that whole system is thrown out, that means testing is thrown
out in the state of Minnesota and the other states that I mentioned earlier.
>> Yes, Democrats do that more often- >> Yes.
>> Deliver for people and people will love you.
It's not that complicated.