Mike Huckabee: Government Breakfast: A Symptom, Not a Solution
Governor Huckabee has taken some heat by some fiscal conservatives for lending support to Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. I defended the Governor when Michelle Malkin suggested that his position on this issue was proof he was a nanny-stater.
In his new book, A Simple Government, Huckabee addresses a related issue: school breakfasts. He is blunt: “What does it say about our society that so many parents apparently can’t get it together enough to give their children a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice. It is that they just assume, after years of the practiced, that it’s the government’s job to pay for school breakfasts?” In the next paragraph, he makes it plain that it’s the parents job to feed their kids.
In the paragraph after that, however, he appears to backpedal, writing that he is no way suggesting that we stop school breakfasts. In a conference call with bloggers today, I asked him plainly:
If you were president in 2013 and a Republican House and Senate voted to end the federal school breakfast program in one year and the school lunch program one year after that, and the department of education the year after that, would you sign the bill, considering that in your book you show that these things would be better handled by parents, churches, and the states, respectively, rather than the federal government, and in fact, the federal role in education is itself unconstitutional?
His answer: Yes, he would sign a bill abolishing the Federal Department of Education, if Congress gave him such a bill to sign. On the question of school lunches, he fudged a little (pardon the pun), suggesting that he would consider it if he could be assured there would a church organization or the states would make up the difference. Not a knee-jerk answer, but thoughtful and responsive, even if a little tentative.
