Curley: Ferguson wants to feed every student in Washington, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson said this four days ago:

“I’m excited to work with Senator Riccelli and Representative Berg on legislation to ensure that every student …” Ferguson started.

Every student, that’s 1.5 million. So not just those that make under a certain amount of money, but every student, even the kids whose parents are greedy and don’t pay their fair share.

“Every student attending K-12 public schools receives …” Ferguson continued.

Government schools.

“Free breakfast and lunch as part of their basic education,” Ferguson said.

Free. There is no such thing as free.

Bartenders figured out ‘free lunch’ in 1917 — why can’t Ferguson?

In 1917 in Chicago, a bunch of bartenders and saloon owners had to go testify because the government was coming after them and saying, “Hey, you guys have this sign at the bar that says free lunch.”

And they’re like, “Yeah, well, look, it’s not really free. The way we set it up is, if you buy a drink, then you get free lunch. So it’s not really free.”

And one of them, Mike Mally, said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The reason we want them to get the ‘free lunch’ is because then they’ll drink more, they’ll sit there and eat the sandwich, and they’ll drink more. But it’s not really free. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

But apparently, the governor doesn’t realize that.

The people, his fellow travelers there — I don’t know if Republicans stood up as well — they stood up and applauded.

I’m assuming that when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would go into a bank and rob the bank, and then get on their horses and run off somewhere, and maybe the rest of the crew. I’m assuming there’s also applause when they spill out the bags and all the cash is there. The same type of applause would occur.

“Right now, if you’re a single parent working 40 hours a week, making 19 bucks an hour, your child does not qualify for free meals,” Ferguson said. “That is unacceptable, and that needs to change. This will improve learning for kids and save time and money for working parents.”

I’m all in favor of providing a direct subsidy to somebody who’s making $19 an hour, and they have a child, so that’s about $39,000 a year.

The math doesn’t add up: Why feed 1.5 million when 300,000 actually need it?

Here’s where the numbers would work, so if we have a parent that’s not making enough money and we have to feed the kid, then let’s feed those kids.

Here are your numbers, governor — this would be if you were a responsible governor, and these people weren’t standing up for this — so how many kids in the state of Washington would fall into that category? I’m giving you rough numbers because you can’t get the exact number, but it’s about 300,000.

About 300,000 kids would fall into the category of mom and dad, or mom, whatever, living in a household, making under $40,000. By the way, the federal government picks up about 85% of the cost of feeding the kids, though about 15% comes from the state.

To feed those kids, the federal government would pay $380 million, which is breakfast and lunch, to feed those kids, the ones he’s concerned about. But that’s not the way it works, because what happens is that he wants to feed all of them.

Here are the numbers for us in the state of Washington, to feed all the kids, 1.5 million kids altogether, the total cost from the federal government is about $35 billion to feed all the kids in all the schools. But for the state of Washington, the numbers work out that it would cost $1.5 billion to feed every kid in the state of Washington.

And remember, this is money that the government doesn’t have. They’re just simply adding it to the ongoing bill that is included in the federal debt, which is at this point, $11,642 on every single citizen in the United States.

To solve the problem of the kid who’s not getting food, whose mom makes $19 an hour, let’s feed all the kids, let’s just feed them all $1.5 billion, and it’ll end up being total cost to the federal government without the money, because they don’t even have the money.

Man, oh man, you are so generous. So, $1.5 billion, you are so generous, governor. And the fact that these lawmakers stood up and applauded this is just insulting.

If you really cared, here’s what I would suggest — because, oh, we don’t want the kids to feel really bad if they’re going up there with a little card that says they get a free lunch — I have a better idea.

Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you take all the money that you run through the programs, because every tax dollar that the government takes in, it takes about $1.50 in order to disburse it?

If you bring in $1 and it costs you $1.50 to disperse, that really isn’t cost-effective. How about we just give them the money? Why don’t you do this? Just send them the money.

By the way, the woman is making $19 an hour — she can apply for a whole bunch of additional federal government programs as well, which add up to about $20,000 to $35,000. She can get all sorts of additional entitlements that come her way.

Why not just send families cash instead?

But what you could do is just send them cash, just cash at the beginning of the year, and they could have it, and you could fire a whole bunch of federal workers and state workers and just inject the cash right to that person. They don’t have to worry about it. They can put a little bit away for food, a little bit away for rent, and they can take the money.

But no, instead, the governor wants to make sure that everybody gets fed. We want to make sure every child gets fed in the state of Washington.

There is no such thing as free. You’re going to tax the crap out of people and feed kids whose parents can already feed them. Why? Because what you want to do is you want to make them dependent upon the state.

Go back to Otto von Bismarck. He realized, “Hey, if we can give him free this and free that, we can always count on their vote.”

And you are also breaking a really sacred bond between a parent and a child. Now the parent has no idea what the kid is eating. We know that they throw out about 40% of the crap that they’re fed. They just throw it out because they don’t necessarily care. The parent has no idea what they’re being fed. All they know is they’re sending the kids off to school, and the “government” is feeding them, all of them.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. None. But they’re applauding it, and that’s going to be part of the tax that just went through.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

Follow @http://twitter.com/curleyseattle