Democrats demand universal free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack for kids in school

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Democrats in the House and Senate proposed legislation this week that would give all students from pre-school through high school three free meals a day plus a snack regardless of income, a move they said is needed to cope with the "record numbers" of American kids who are struggling with hunger.

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The bill makes no mention of how the program would be funded or what it would cost. Many bills include language saying that Congress will appropriate whatever money is needed to fund a new program, or that funding will come from spending offsets or higher taxes.

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It is an international embarrassment that today, in the richest country in the history of the world, we are seeing record numbers of children and youth struggling with hunger on a daily basis," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the sponsor of the Senate legislation.

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Democrats say their bill, the Universal School Meals Program Act, would help put an end to the "school lunch shaming" that is seen under the current program, which requires kids to show they are eligible for a free meal.

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Children have been publicly shamed for not being able to afford lunch, and as USDA reported, lunch shaming is a problem throughout the country, including withholding grades for school meal debt," according to a description of the bill. "Some schools resorted to heinous scare tactics to collect school meal debt; one school threatened to take away parents’ children and another school marked children’s skin with an ‘I Need Lunch Money’ stamp."

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