Editorial: This is not conservative

Gov. Kim Reynolds is playing politics with child nutrition, much like her colleagues in  Congress who are trying to gut feeding programs in the long-delayed Farm Bill. Reynolds refused $29 million through the USDA that would issue voucher cards to families to use in grocery shopping, which would help replace the loss of school lunches this summer. Last week, Reynolds asked USDA to allow a waiver that would allow Iowa to use the federal funds to create a new program, under which Reynolds would hand out boxes of food through food pantries and non-profits.

Meanwhile, the Farm Bill that should have been passed last year is on hold, probably until after the November elections, because Republicans are trying to write nutrition programs out of the bill.

Reynolds suggests that the nanny state knows better how to feed children than a mother and father. She claims her program would save money, serve 60,000 more children and provide better nutrition than allowing families to shop at Fareway and Hy-Vee, Iowa-based grocers and efficient food distributors.

The governor isn’t serious about creating the program. She did not bother to consult the Food Bank of Iowa, for example, to see how it would work to distribute boxes of food weekly throughout the state and in its tiny villages.

Food pantries are vital. Reynolds implies by creating her own program that government and non-profits are more efficient at providing services than market-based merchants. It is socialism, plain and simple.

Allowing families to use electronic voucher cards with grocers to buy staples would be less costly, unless the governor thinks that price-gouging is going on.

If the USDA denies the waiver, Reynolds can forego the funds and blame Secretary Tom Vilsack and the federal bureaucracy. If it approves the waiver, which would be better than nothing, Reynolds can crow about how parceling out food to poor people — eat this cheese, you lactose-intolerant waif, because I put it in the box — who couldn’t possibly decide for themselves when they are on the dole. That has a certain cachet in Iowa.

Reynolds has turned conservative principles inside out. She is suggesting that individuals acting independently in their self-interest do not rationally seek out the most efficient option: Valentinos or Delicias, Walmart, Fareway or Hy-Vee. She is asserting that government is better at allocating resources than markets. Where does that road lead?

IDEOLOGY HAS ITS COSTS. Banning books is costing the City of Alta big-time. Its public library had been in a convenient, practical sharing arrangement with the Alta-Aurelia School District until the Iowa Legislature imposed a ban on certain books, including classics that any decent municipal library would provide. So they divorced, and the city went looking for a new library home. They don’t come cheap.

The Spectra building would be great but it would cost $550,000. Putting up a metal building will cost at least $200,000. That would be for something tiny, maybe 1,500 square feet. So in order to keep Mark Twain away from fifth-graders, the citizens of Alta and Aurelia are willing to vote for legislators who impose these kinds of costs on them. As Donald Trump would say, they ought to have their heads examined!

Republicans used to be known as the party of fiscal restraint and less government intrusion. Give us some of that good old Congressman HR Gross, who voted against the Vietnam War because it cost too much. The good people of Buena Vista and Cherokee counties used to have some good old practical common sense.

THE IOWA REPUBLICAN PARTY IS NOT CONSERVATIVE. It is trying to tell people how they should live, even what they should eat, what they should read, whom they may love, and how they govern their medical decisions. In service of ideology, they propose new government programs that cost more and defy market principles. They accuse the Democrats of being the party of big government, when the GOP wants to jump in bed between consenting adults to referee, or monitor what books you read, or deeming that it can distribute food better than private enterprise, or destroying practical partnerships between local government bodies. It should frighten and sicken a real conservative to see nationalistic socialism creeping in.