School Meals Programs in Massachusetts

There were two Letters to the Editor in today's Boston Globe, which dealt with a bill before the US House of Representatives concerning School Lunch Programs.  The US Senate has already passed their version.

Both letters pleaded for passage.  The authors were:

• MADDIE RIBBLE, of Boston, who is the policy director of the Massachusetts Public Health Association, and,
• CATHERINE D’AMATO, also of Boston, who is the president/CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank.

I am all for the school programs that provide additional nutrition to students in school, so they can learn better and thus become, eventually, better, more productive, citizens.

My question is, which states do these two women, and The Boston Globe for that matter (they published the two letters), wish to plunder to pay for these local programs?  Are they hoping to take money from Alaska or Texas or North Dakota?  When we ask for Federal Moneys that is what we are doing.  Either that or we think, but are unwilling to say, that Louisiana and Mississippi are incompetent when it comes to feeding its school-age children and we need a Federal program to lead them along.  If THAT is the case we should be gracious enough and honest enough to say it.

Otherwise, this should be a state level program, financed with state tax revenues.

The Federal Government is not a magic money tree, where programs are free.  All those Federal programs come out of someone's pocket and sooner or later it is either the pockets of those in other lands to whom we sold goods and services or it is our own individual taxpayer pockets, either through taxes we pay or goods and services we purchase which are also taxed.

Legislating on Beacon Hill should be about apportioning pain and those legislators should not be sloughing their work off on the Federal Congress.

There is no free lunch.

In the case of this issue, the Commonwealth should pay for what it thinks is just and necessary.  Either we cut somewhere else or we raise taxes or we stiff the children and our own future.  Asking Alaska to pay for it should not be an option under consideration.

Regards  —  Cliff