THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503240001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
It's a pity congressional Democrats aren't strong enough to engage in honest criticism of Republican efforts to transfer the school-lunch program from federal to state control. Their teary theatrics over a relatively small issue underlines their essential irrelevance.
Oh, there's some room for misgivings. The lunch program isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed. Moreover, reformers can't be sure that, in a pinch, some states won't let children in need go hungry for lack of funding or caring or both. They've done so in the past and may again.
But if House Republicans have taken a tuck in future funding (by capping block grants to the states), they've by no means slashed it. To the contrary, an increase of 4.5 percent per year is permitted, and this could be stretched by charging those who can afford to pay for lunches.
It pleases Democrats to call the 4.5 percent increase a ``cut,'' and the reform overall ``a shameful and cruel budget assault on America's children.'' This description from the Children's Defense Fund meshes nicely with demagogic attacks by Democratic officeholders who staged a rally of 3,500 children on the steps of the Capitol last Sunday. There were clowns and balloons - and lunch - at a pseudo event typifying the increasing coarseness of what passes for political debate.
The Republicans, to be sure, are no strangers to hardball and, as regards school lunches, seem to have painted bull's-eyes on their own foreheads. With federal money gushing into so many undeserving pockets, why in the world should they voluntarily don the stereotype of favoring the rich with cash and the poor with catechisms? Perhaps Newt Gingrich is not quite the master strategist so often suggested. Perhaps, on the other hand, he (and the Democrats as well) would rather quarrel about free lunches than, say, about free banquets consumed regularly by Western-state tax-eaters who denounce federal gravy and have it, too.
One remembers Bill Clinton's brave talk about charging these rugged individualists a little something for grazing and mining rights on public lands, and remembers as well that the president soon cut and ran. Now, with Republicans in charge, Western farmers and miners have been able to ensure their subsidies, thanks to a provision of the so-called Private Property Rights Act approved by the House.
As related by David Frum in The Wall Street Journal, this provision says that if farming and mining interests ever are charged a fair price for water, they first must be ``compensated'' with tax funds. Former Colorado Governor David Lamm calls such interests ``welfare queens.'' They reign, for sure. The Interior Department pays $1,850 per acre-foot to deliver water to California's Central Valley and sells it for less than $20 per acre-foot. This is corporate welfare quietly furthered by Republicans and Democrats who finger-point on the evening news about peanut-butter sandwiches.
Meantime, farm-subsidy checks from the Agriculture Department are posted regularly to man an upscale urban address. One recipient is Sam Donaldson of ABC-TV who runs some sheep and goats on a big spread in New Mexico and, over the past two years, has received $97,000 in subsidy checks to his Northern Virginia mailbox. Plus $3,500 to help him pay for watering facilities for his livestock. While this sort of stuff is going on - both legal and lavish - the Clinton nominee to head the Agriculture Department is telling a Senate committee that the farm economy is so shaky that no thought should be given to reducing the billions of subsidies that cushion it.
Why the great uproar over school lunches? Because the stakes are so small. Why the silence about the truly big giveaways? Because the stakes, including who gets to be in office, are so large. Neither party wants to go to war on money issues that would make a difference. We keep borrowing to pay the subsidies - $5 trillion in debt and bragging about belief in free markets, self-reliance and old-time virtues. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
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