GOP fears a free school lunch threat to America

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Cedar Rapids Gazette today:

Now that Thanksgiving/Christmas food gifting is over, low-income Iowans face a 2024 of heightened anxiety. Reduced SNAP benefits running out earlier each month, grocery prices still inflated. And now comes Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’ jolting decision to reject $20-some million in federal Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) funds for children’s lunches next summer.

So, no $40 per month per kid to offset three months of no school free or reduced-cost meals. Reynolds insists state programs already in place will make up the difference. What’s more, she claims, they offer better nutrition, thus warding off the “epidemic” of childhood obesity. Iowa will avoid paying $2.2 million in EBT administrative costs, the governor said.

“If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state’s needs,” Reynolds said.


Reynolds has rejected federal funding before. In 2021, it was $95 million for COVID-19 testing in schools. Last year it was $3 million for federal climate planning. As if scorned federal participation is anything but Iowans’ tax dollars coming back.

The pattern is rejection of nearly all things Joe Biden.

Some other red state governors are taking the same tack — rejection of federal funds and a swipe at the Democratic president, all without explaining how drastically cut resources could possibly put expensive, higher-protein foods within reach of increasingly desperate households. Like Reynolds, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said state programs will handle matters. He was not subtle in his rejection of federal funds: “I don’t believe in welfare.” His turndown of $18 million in EBT funds “saves” $300,000 in administrative costs. That doesn’t jibe with Iowa’s estimate of $2.2 million.

Republican governors surely know free lunching is not freeloading, where an aid recipient gives nothing in return. It is setting the table for healthful growth and — here’s a word Republicans embrace — productivity.

Yet ever since 1933, when Iowa Republican-turned-Democrat Henry A. Wallace became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and started the first USDA-linked school lunch program, sniping away at free school lunch and other aid programs for the hungry has been a right-wing tradition. The welfare seems so … so socialistic!

Republicans headed by Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio recoiled in 1946 when Democratic President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act. Truman noted how many undernourished Depression-era men had failed World War II draft physicals.


Three decades later, when U.S. Rep. Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) replaced discredited President Richard Nixon, Ford was described as “a guy who’d empty his pockets for a hungry kid, then vote against food aid for the poor.”

Ten years ago, then-U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) said school children receiving free lunch should work to earn the benefit — like sweeping out the cafeteria. The idea, said Kingston, is to promote the work ethic and “instill in them the fact that there’s no free lunch.” At least he didn’t insist that low-income kids clean toilets.

You could write a short book titled “GOP Stalwarts Who Defend Free School Lunch.”

How to stem Republicans’ perennial grudge?

Call it something other than “free lunch.”

We could call it “empowering lunch” because it staves off distraction from a child’s study, thus preparing the kid for a productive (taxpaying) adulthood. But that hints at giving up power, a notion that leaves Republican leaders shuddering.

How about “incentive lunch?” It embraces the same goal while avoiding the “empowering” turnoff. It jibes with Republican legislators’ fondness for giving businesses incentive tax breaks for setting up shop locally.

From Henry A. Wallace’s pioneering to Iowan Tom Vilsack’s able stewardship as agriculture secretary today, Iowans’ regard for hungry kids has shown winsome symmetry.

Gov. Reynolds’ rejection of federal funds for summer meals turns that legacy on its head. Her constant resistance to all things Joe Biden echoes the GOP’s aversion to all things Franklin Roosevelt.

(Retired Gazette writer-editor Jerry Elsea has been a co-founding board member of Matthew 25, a longtime volunteer at Linn Community Food Bank and a 14-year reading tutor at Cedar River Academy at Taylor Elementary, where all his students gave meals there a happy thumbs-up.)