Colorado is one of nine states offering public school students free breakfast and lunch. Focus on the Family hopes the state’s citizens will vote today to eliminate the program.
“There is a big difference between providing and encouraging the availability of nutritious foods in schools and expecting taxpayers to fund it all,” wrote Paul Batura, a Focus vice president, in his article, “Should Taxpayers Be Paying for Students’ Breakfast and Lunch?”
Batura linked free meal programs to President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs, “which significantly expanded and began normalizing and destigmatizing the distribution of government aid.”
He also linked meal programs to the autocratic leader in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. “Does the government providing free meals for all instill and cultivate a dangerous mindset that Big Brother is here to take care of you from beginning to end?” he asked.
Focus noted the absence of any organized opposition to the Colorado’s meals program and was willing to stand in the gap.
“In Colorado, no groups have formed to oppose the proposition to continue free meals, and no money has been raised to try and persuade people to vote against the initiative,” Batura wrote. “It seems nobody wants to be accused of supporting anything that’s anti-child.”
On Tuesday, Colorado voters will decide propositions LL and MM, which would continue programs providing free school breakfast and lunch for all Colorado public school students who want them, buy food from the state’s farmers and ranchers, and help families, older adults and people with disabilities afford groceries. The programs would be funded through a tax increase for filers earning more than $300,000 a year.
Focus claims meal programs yield “unfortunate and unnecessary class divisions.”
Pediatricians supporting the meals program say it helps the 14.3% of Colorado families that can’t afford healthy food.
“Malnourishment and stress impair a child’s immune function and worsen chronic disease, such as asthma,” said the pediatricians. “Impacted children can struggle with irritability, anxiety and difficulty concentrating. And, as a result, these children are more likely to miss school and underperform academically.”
School meal programs predate Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1946, President Harry Truman expanded on a hodgepodge of city and state meal programs to launch the National School Lunch Program to combat malnutrition and promote healthy diets. But some states never bought into the plan, and today the hodgepodge approach persists.
Focus claims meal programs yield “unfortunate and unnecessary class divisions” and questions why any voter who supports women’s access to abortion would care about hungry students.
“It’s ironic, though, that many of the same people who support taxpayer meals for children also support the right to kill children who, just a few years earlier, were still in the womb,” wrote Batura, without citing evidence of his claim.
This isn’t the first time Focus’ “pro-family” political agenda has supported policies that hurt families.
Thanks to Focus and its conservative GOP allies, the U.S. remains the only high-income nation that does not guarantee mothers paid parental leave, which is one public policy family experts nearly universally praise.
Focus doesn’t claim paid family leave is bad for families but opposes it because either companies or taxpayers must foot the bill and because it makes big government even bigger.
Focus also has praised President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which cut taxes for the wealthy while reducing the number of people covered by Medicaid, the health program that pays for 41% of births in the U.S. The cuts to Medicaid likely will lead to further closures of maternity hospitals in rural areas, endangering maternal health.
Focus also supports the “MAHA” agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary. Part of that agenda is changing child vaccine schedules and making some child vaccines harder for parents to access.
“It’s clear that action is needed to address America’s health crisis,” said Focus in its article, “RFK Jr. and MAHA Commission Release Strategy to Make Children Healthy Again.” That article claims, “Hopefully the MAHA Commission’s strategy will begin the long process of restoring children’s health.”
This article originally appeared in Baptist News Global.
