(CNSNews.com) – Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) challenged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Tuesday about the extent of the role he believed the federal government should have in school lunch programs.
“Is there any upper bound philosophically in your thought to the role of the state in caring for our kids?” he asked during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing.
Brat said he didn’t “want to be sitting here at the federal level, micromanaging all these micro issues” which he said “belong to the state and local and optimally at the parent level.”
Referring to an earlier remark by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Brat said, “The ranking member made a comment, ‘it’s our job to provide nutritious meals.’ I think most of us agree with that statement in the short run, but I want to get your thoughts on what you’d make of that in the long run – both on the economic front and on the ethics front.”
Vilsack said the questions were “really important” ones.
“Frankly, as you were asking your question I was actually thinking back to my childhood,” he continued, “adopted into a family where my mother … she was a mean lady when she drank and she was a wonderful lady when she stopped, but during the time that she was drinking she was not there.”
“You know somebody’s got to be there, somebody’s got to be there. I’d like it to be mom and dad but sometimes that’s just not possible, so somebody’s got to be there,” Vilsack said.
“You know we send our children to school and obviously you know when they’re in school this whole [in loco parentis] notion, you would hope that the school district is taking care of them, protecting them, feeding them well, and teaching them well so that at some point in time the light bulb turns on and the kid basically says, I want a better life, I want a better way. I’m going to work hard. I’m going to do what I need to do.”
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