Read the article again and you’ll see that the Democrat-controlled Congress cut $1 billion from child nutrition programs, which made THEM, and not President Reagan or the USDA panel of nutritionists, ultimately responsible for any “condiments as food group” issues people may have had. Notice the typical Democrat photo ops “where they feasted on skimpy-looking meals that conformed to the new standards” - standards that they forced the USDA into enacting by cutting their funding and ordering them to do more with less.
Hogwash! If your employer tells you that you can no longer work overtime and your pay will therefore drop by 10%, you perhaps cut out eating out or partying two nights a week or change your vacation plans to something more modest. What you chose to cut is not the fault of your boss.
And Republicans would never do that? :rolleyes: ANY party would.
I thought Cecil presented it rather fairly, and pointed out the middle-level bureaucrats who screwed up.
Not the same thing AT ALL. If your boss told you that from now on you had to drive a car to work that had a monthly payment $100 higher than your monthly salary, then castigated you for continuing to drive your Chevette because you couldn’t afford the Corvette, THAT would be analogous to what happened with the Congress and USDA. The USDA was given $1 billion less for child nutrition programs and told to cut expenses in those programs specifically. They didn’t have the option of cutting costs by using less ink on the USDA stamps put on meat labels in order to keep the $1 billion in the nutrition programs. When you’re specifically told to do something, and not given adequate resources to do it correctly, the people who allocated the resources have no ground for complaining about how the job was done.
It wasn’t the mid-level bureaucrats’ fault - it was Congress’ fault for setting them up to fail from the very beginning.
Why can’t you just say…The Congress cut $1 billion?. It’s not like Reagan/Stockman/Helms/Republicans were gonna fund the school lunch program at the previous year’s level. They wanted to cut as much as the Dems did. So party affiliation had little to do with the amount of the budget reduction for that item.
The “condiments as food group issues” was an outgrowth of something that had been ongoing for more than a year. As Cecil noted, many varied groups were trying to come up with food that kids would actually eat and not waste. The actual proposals were merely embarassing for Reagan, etc.
See my post above. Any political party would have done the same.
It wasn’t about “they.” The Congress, both Democrats and Republican, knew that they had to cut the Federal budget, just as they did the previous year under Carter. It was only a matter of how much to cut from where. Democrats in the House and Senate were far from monolithic in how much they were willing to trim from the school luch program.
The USDA had already decided to cut the size of portions and raise the price of lunches. THAT’S how they were coping with most of the reductions in funding.
I’m afraid your analogy is very poor. Congress made specific mandates and set a very short time-table. USDA wasn’t given the sorts of obvious options your analogy suggests.
That’s irrelevant. Perhaps any party would, but any party didn’t. The Democrats did. Next time you get pulled over for running a stop light, try telling the cop that any driver would run it.
Bill H.. I spent four hours last night, reading three different newspaper’s coverage of the matter between January of 1980 and January of 1982. This was done electronically. I used as search terms “school lunch programs” and “ketchup school lunch.” The newspapers used were the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. And, yes, I realize that the selection of papers available to me might allow someone to criticize the info. So be it.
Everyone’s probably correct. My analogy might not have been the best. I was just winging it. Bad move, evidently, on my part. That’s why I decided to spend the research time. By-the-way, Cecil evidently spent some time doing something similar. His column reflects a balanced approach to what actually happened, both in the public’s perception, and behind the scenes.
Bill H. said
USDA had been studying their options for much longer that three months. That’s why ketchup-on-fries was offered as a two-veggie combo. I don’t blame either the Democrats or the Republicans, as both were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Cutting had to be done. But the flap over ketchup as a veggie was nothing but a fiasco, proposed by low-level functionaries, hopped on by the media as a “hook” for their stories, and used by the Democrats(the party NOT in the White House at the time). If the program had been a success, then Reagan and the Republicans could have trumpeted it as a success of their cost cuttting. But, it didn’t fly with the public, so the Administration had to swallow a public relations problem. That’s all it was, a public relations problem.
samclem said
Bill H. said
The Democrats used it because THEY WERE NOT IN CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE. If The Dems had won the Presidency, and if the USDA had proposed the same rules, you can BET the Republicans would have done the same thing. So, it’s NOT irrelevant.
I love it. Cecil reports a fair and impartial overview of what happened, with his usual wisdom. And we very quickly have finger-pointing: “It was the nasty stinking knee-jerk liberal Democrats’ fault!” “It was the rich fat-cat heartless Republicans’ fault!” Alas, that the country has been divided into two separate, irreconcilable, enemy camps.
When a party (or any other person or organization) does something dishonest, it is dishonest. No amount of hypothetical conjecturing on what others might have done is relevant. The facts are the facts.
OK, this is NOT a thread about politics in terms of Republicans vs Democrats. It is a thread about politics in terms of bureaucracies, time constraints, and poor thinking by politicians. It is, in fact, a thread about ketchup. Back to topic, please.
Thanks for getting us outta that stinky political “debate!”
It is stated that tomatoes are a wonderful source of lycopene, ESPECIALLY in
cooked form, such as tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and ketchup. Of course, diabetics have to watch it because ketchup contains larger amounts of sugar than other cooked tomatoes. :mad:
But, it didn’t fly with the public, so the Administration had to swallow a public relations problem. That’s all it was, a public relations problem.