'brown bag' story by Paul Ryan at CPAC is from a novel written by a free lunch program supporter
“The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that. This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy, Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. He told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch, one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand.”
–Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, March 6, 2014
This was an interesting statement made by the 2012 GOP vice presidential candidate, equating school lunches to an “empty soul.” So one would think the anecdote, described by the National Review as “moving,” would be rock-solid. But the story seemed a bit pat.
Did Eloise Anderson, Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, ever meet such a child?
. . .
This actually seemed a little strange. Could the tale told in congressional testimony really be drawn from a book? It did not make much sense in part because Schroff and
Mazyck are
partnering with a group called No Kid Hungry to help end childhood hunger in the United States. One key part of the program is connecting hungry kids with federal programs such as school lunches and food stamps.
. . Secretary Anderson was referring to a television interview which she had seen with
Maurice Mazyck.
THE REST:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/
