Complexities

A Single Bill Examined

Dear readers, apologies for the dearth of content lately. I am shockingly busy with my duties as an elected official, through that won’t stay that way forever.

For now I’d like to introduce you to a bit of the complexities that go into my consideration of a single bill. This is an abridged version - the total complexities could go on for quite a lot longer, but you’ll get the gist.

The proposal is a bill expanding school provided (“free”) lunch and breakfast programs administered by the USDA, tied to additional federal money, and increases in cost to the state as well.

This bill has so many facets to consider that I’m going to have to pick from a few – the most necessary, I hope – to keep my focus. First, let’s consider the reality of the current USDA in-school meal programs. Yes, the USDA, and therefore the feds, govern much of the criteria for school lunch in New Hampshire. This is because “federal money” is used as a carrot in the mandates. The feds steal the money from NH citizens, and then they demand the state cede sovereignty in return for receiving some of that money back.

We have laws that say that New Hampshire must develop nutritional standards for schools… but, what actually happens? We just adopt the federal guidelines, because if we actually followed the law as written, and developed out own guidelines, the federal government would seek to impoverish our state. So, the perverse incentives actually have us as elected officials actively pushing harmful federal programs on our constituents. I’m coming to believe that the colonies under George had both more freedom and better representation than do citizens of the USA.

I happened to have just read an absolute indictment of the state of the USDA meals program published in The American Mind in which details of school meal programs purchasing meat products of such low quality that they are rejected by fast-food joints were exposed. While I cannot relate that directly to the NH experience, as I simply lack the data, I was able to review some guidelines for nutrition that are in place in NH schools and let me be frank: they are abominable. It is quite clear that the USDA requirements continue to be based on the now thoroughly debunked “food pyramid,” which, we now know, was the result of pay-to-play, and outright bribery of federal officials by carbohydrate magnates to promote a high-carbohydrate diet and demonize fats. Good science now informs us that our high-carb diet is significantly responsible for the terrible state of average health in America (obesity, inflammatory disorders, etc), while fats are actually quite harmless in reasonable quantities. The USDA actually bans milk with a higher than 1% fat content from schools.

So, as you can see from the above, the priority in this situation isn’t getting quality food into students. Nobody in this entire process is actually incentivized to do so. Would you like to take a guess as to who is well incentivized to ensure the health of children? It’s parents and guardians. It’s only parents and guardians. When this responsibility is handed over to government the officials and bureaucrats involved are incentivized by things such as careers and reelection, which, in turn, means they care far more about checking boxes than anything else. So, when meals are paid for by government, what do you think they’re concerned about? That’s right: checking boxes. Did we get enough calories, on average, in bellies? Did we go with the lowest bidder? Did I get the maximum federal dollar allotment that creates more administrative jobs in my district? Can I tell my constituents I fed 5,000 more kids? Nobody is asking did the child get the healthy food he or she needs as an individual for optimum physical health? Nobody is incentivized to ask that, and answering it just isn’t possible through a central planning model.

What am I getting at? Simple, it seems a bad idea generally to put government in charge of feeding kids. It may or may not be a bad idea at the local level. It is probably a bad idea at the state level. It is absolutely a terrible idea at the federal level. The reality of meals meeting USDA guidelines confirms this – so do children’s waistlines. My opinion, therefore, is that we at the state level should be looking to roll back this federal program. Whether we replace it with something at the state or federal level is another conversation – and one I’m happy to have. The loss of federal dollars will be seen by most as a mistake. I see the continuation of this unconstitutional system – a system that does not remotely resemble federalism – to be a mistake. The federal government has no right to collect outrageous taxes from the several states only to then hold the political processes of our states hostage to their whims with these “carrot” dollars, and the “stick” of fines.

So, I’m working not just on this bill, but also on the grand tragedy that is “the system.”