New Campaign Pocketbook Issue? School Lunches Impacted By High Food Oil Costs
Talk about political timing. On a week when Democratic Senator Barack Obama will start a two week economic tour underscoring the role of the economy in his campaign for the White House, there’s yet more bad news about a “pocketbook issue” — and one that hasn’t not come up before in such an economically grim context.
It’s an issue under the political radar — but one that could impact many voting Americans. Every day.
It’s a (true) cliche that people vote their pocketbooks in election. Now, as if it wasn’t enough that many Americans are being laid off, face foreclosures on their homes and nearly have to take out a bank loan — if they can qualify one — to fill their gas tank..as if it wasn’t enough that reports suggest some Americans trying to trade in or sell their SUVs find there’s no market for them….now there’s this:
The cost of school lunches is now zooming nationwide — and parents will start feeling the pinch this fall:
When America’s schoolchildren return to class in the fall, they will learn a painful lesson in economics: Higher food and fuel prices are forcing up the price of school breakfasts and lunches across the country, by as much as 50 percent in some districts.
This will be yet another pocketbook issue likely to inspire many voters who aren’t hardcore political partisans to see Elections 2008 as a chance to implement the Big Broom theory of politics: they will want to sweep those in power out, and bring in a new crew and to see what they can do.
If voters find they have to cut back due to soaring gas prices, can’t get home equity loans, struggle with credit card debt, worry about their jobs, see headlines about teacher layoffs and school funding cutbacks AND have to pay extra for their kids’ lunches it can’t help those who are effectively saying “stay the course but just make a few course corrections”.
The cost of staples that make up the backbone of school meal programs has soared in the past year, far outstripping federal subsidies. While inflation has driven up the price of milk by 12 percent, cheese by 15 percent and bread by 17 percent, the National School Lunch Program has increased what it pays local school districts to feed 30.1 million schoolchildren by only 3 percent.
The news that parents will start to find they have to pay substantially more for the kid’s school food comes against this backdrop:
The “Change that Works for You” tour is to launch Monday in North Carolina, a state he hopes to make a battleground in the fall with Republican John McCain.
According to his campaign, “Obama will travel across the country, talking to Americans about how the economy affects their everyday lives,” in events with voters “where they work and where they live.”
…..“The middle class has always been the engine of prosperity in this country—but for nearly eight years we’ve had an administration that tells working people ‘you’re on your own,’ ” Obama said in a statement.
“Not when I’m President. I’ll reform our tax code to benefit the middle class instead of the big corporations. I’ll make sure that quality health care is affordable and accessible for every American. And I’ll provide real relief from the housing crisis by creating a foreclosure prevention fund, providing a tax break for homeowners, and cracking down on fraudulent lenders. Those are the kind of solutions that will make a difference for working Americans—and that’s the kind of change we’ll be discussing on this tour.”
Another part of the political context is the fact that Senator John McCain is gingerly trying to distance himself from Bush on the economy.
And in some cases, not quite so gingerly:
Republican Sen. John McCain’s top domestic policy adviser derided President Bush’s knowledge of the economy, saying in an interview published today that Bush knows nothing about the economy except taxes.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, who has been McCain’s top adviser and spokesman on economic issues, made the comments as he attempted to distance McCain’s economic policies from those of the president.
“The only thing that he shares in common with President Bush is the understanding of good tax policy,” Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Sadly, it seems that is all President Bush understood in the economy.”
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino focused on the first sentence in Holtz-Eakin’s statement, saying that “We agree President Bush’s tax cuts have greatly benefited the economy — they brought us out of the recession he inherited in 2001 and led to 26 consecutive quarters of economic growth. And we agree that the tax cuts should be made permanent.”
After all, spin is spin…. But longtime conservative columnist Bob Novak cut through all of the niceties.
Novak lambasted the McCain advisor’s claim that Obama’s economic plans would be a third Bush term:
That is the silliest thing I have ever heard! And I won’t even dignify how stupid it is.
But Novak also said many Republicans wouldn’t hold it against him if McCain was trying to get away from Bush and slamming Bush.
The question is whether that will work for the GOP in this election.
If Americans feel their pocketbooks are nearly empty or tattered due to paying for gas, school lunches, food and even the privilege of having their (remaining) credit, quite a few may be willing to push happy-talk spin and even what some may consider to be logical arguments aside…and the Big Broom theory of politics could come into play.
7 Responses to “New Campaign Pocketbook Issue? School Lunches Impacted By High Food Oil Costs”
[...] New Campaign Pocketbook Issue? School Lunches Impacted By High … When America’s schoolchildren return to class in the fall, they will learn a painful lesson in economics: Higher food and fuel prices are forcing up the price of school breakfasts and lunches across the country, by as much as 50 percent … [...]
[...] Jason Feingold, Ed. wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
Considering the Obama campaign has argued that high energy prices are a good thing since they make alternative fuels economically feasable, it would be hard for the Obama campaign to argue that it will lower fuel prices in order to lower prices.
My guess is that the Obama campaign will offer to raise taxes on the rich in order to subsidize school lunches. Of course, higher taxes will slow down the economy and make it harder to parents to pay the subsidized price.
I wonder if anyone in the Obama campaign actually paid attention in their economic classes while attending the Ivy leagues.
The economy will take a hit if Obama is elected. In addition to changes to capital gains tax policy, Obama and the Democrats will slowly chip away at the economy, making big economic changes with small policy changes.
This article: http://www.greenfaucet.com/hanlons-pub/obama-it…
Really points out what could happen to the economy if Democrats take over the White House. California is still paying for what their Dem govenor did years ago..
As opposed to the amazing economic boon we are having right now…. Nevermind the actual problems the poor and middle classes are having, just don't tax the rich too much so they won't be able to buy another yacht or replace the porsche that their teenager wrecked.
[yawn] Some of us anticipated higher food prices several months ago, when corn prices rose (talk of “four dollar corn” in Iowa, for example). Never mind this and the related pre-oil-price-surge shrieking about the “world food crisis!” [tm] that the chattering classes were Concerned about already. Can anyone be surprised that higher fuel prices, whose *** OBVIOUS *** inflationary effect (not “impact” [sic]) has long been known by at least some, would not have ripple effects (not “impacts” [sic]) on food prices and the price of everything else that is transported?
And who's going to complain the most loudly? Why, the same lefties who have always been saying our fuel prices are “too low” [sic] or “artificially low” [sic] because they aren't so ridiculously taxed as are fuels in their starry-eyed-object European nations.
[yawn] This was predictable. Don't even think of whining. And if you blame Bush for this you are failures. Of course, many failures will blame Bush this November.
* * *
Not only is California paying for Dem-lib destructive economic and political policies, so has Cyanide Nation elsewhere, including where I am now, State #9 in my “living education” throughout North America: Detroit. Michigan (blue nation lunacy) and Detroit in particular are terrible, just terrible. (The guy I saw on the road this weekend with his vehicle covered with bumper stickers had one that is telling — it showed a blue silhouette of Michigan and an old Detroit automobile, and said “Going BLUE.” Yes, going *** BACKWARD *** to failures of the past. In Michigan's and Detroit's cases, they've never escaped the failures of the past in a number of ways! T-Steel and Rudi can tell you more.)
Obama and the Dems' “Taking America Back” = Taking America BACKWARD. That is the obvious threat!
And — tsk, tsk –
“it would be hard for the Obama campaign to argue that it will lower fuel prices in order to lower prices … My guess is that the Obama campaign will offer to raise taxes on the rich in order to subsidize school lunches.”
1. Of course they'll argue that prices should be lower, now that they're so high and people object to this! Who cares what they said earlier? (Should we care what they say now?)
2. This is an easy solution — increase the taxes on “the rich” and subsidize _fuel_, particularly in Dem-voting neighborhoods (assisting fuel prices for “the poor”). If they can do it in other authoritarian countries like Iran (whom a few Obama voters view as a better nation than this one, anyway), why not do it here under a more-authoritarian, more-interventionist, kinder, gentler Dem regime?
Just wait for Northeastern Cyanide Nation heating oil subsidies this winter. (Meanwhile, the Republican Sunbelt is neglected for air conditioning, largely; the Dems have yet to give “free” air conditioners and energy to run them to “the poor” [Dem voters] even though Obama's Chicago and other cities in the East like St. Louis that are quite Blue have places that to this day do not have air conditioning and experience fatalities during heat waves every year. The East, not the newer, more functional and less trouble-prone, more Red desert Southwest.)
“I wonder if anyone in the Obama campaign actually paid attention in their economic classes while attending the Ivy leagues.”
Actually, something related to this is now news and it's interesting in its own right as a separate topic. Obama has released the name of someone coming onto his team (into his future administration). Mixed messages (or that may just be the nature of the interpretation of the choice by the author on this Web page).
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/20…
Now that Obama is the nominee there is definitely a spike is completely fact free ranting. Attacking his economics team? Most of them are from the University of Chicago, one of the most conservative economics colleges in the country and the birthplace of Friedman economics. Heck, several of his advisors are strongly libertarian.
His raising of capital gains taxes would be to a level equal to Reagan's. Yeah that epitome of tax the rich liberalism. Great help that capital gains cut has had on the stock market, with around a 20% real term loss since it was enacted.
OK yeah the Democratic Congress has proposed some monumentally stupid ideas for the current crisis, but the Fed has already used up most of their balance sheet buying junk and is a bad day from going into near collapse, yet no one on either side is talking about that. They can't even get rid of the junk because all the banks cannot take it back on their balance sheets.