Every parent’s dream is that big things happen for their kids. It’s every parent’s nightmare to come on hard times and struggle to give their kids even the basics, like lunch money for school. Even in our highest-performing public schools, with the most committed and talented teachers, a child distracted by an empty stomach will never learn at his or her full potential.
Last week was National School Lunch Week, and I’m proud that we live in a country that ensures our young students are properly fed and struggling parents can sleep with a little more peace at night. When President Harry Truman signed into law the federal school lunch program more than 65 years ago, he knew that Missouri families, regardless of their race or where they live, sometimes find themselves stretched thin.
President Truman also understood that ensuring kids were properly fed at school was about more than just a meal. He knew that a well-educated nation was about national security. Kids who learn science, reading and math guarantee that we can stay competitive in an increasingly global economy.
President Truman believed, as I do, that it’s only right for the federal government to have a role in ensuring that all students are properly fed and prepared to learn. That has never been a controversial notion, and it’s why nearly 650,000 young people in Missouri utilized the federal school meal programs last year. That’s nearly 50 percent of Missouri’s students. In some schools, four in every five children are eligible for free or reduced school lunches.
Many of these students come from families with parents who work two and three jobs. Their parents struggle just as much with accepting this help as they struggle with having to miss a soccer game to pick up another shift at work. This economy has not been easy, but Americans have always come together to ensure our kids are the ones who suffer the least.
This shouldn’t be a difficult or partisan issue, and historically it hasn’t been, except for a small handful of extreme politicians. In 2004, for example, only five members of the House of Representatives, out of 435, voted against the legislation to continue federal support for school meals. One of them was my opponent Todd Akin.
This election for US Senate in Missouri comes down to priorities for the federal government.
Todd Akin has explicitly said that he believes the federal government should have no role in education – none. He said that the Department of Education should be abolished and he compared federal student loans to a “stage three cancer of socialism.”
I wholeheartedly disagree.
Unlike Todd Akin, I believe it’s fundamentally wrong to deprive students of every single chance we can give them to succeed. As President Truman said, “Nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children, and proper nourishment comes first in attaining this welfare.” I know struggling families who have simply fallen on hard times want just that: for their kids to have a shot at success.
Every parent in America who puts their son or daughter on the school bus prays that they come home just a little more engaged in their studies, curious about the world around them, and dreaming of something big in life. That’s the dream I’ll keep fighting to protect, for Missouri’s parents and their children, as hard as I know how.
McCaskill faces Akin for U.S. Senate on the Nov. 6 ballot.
