I was thinking Republicans would string us along on House Bill 1082, the proposal to pick up the remaining tab for reduced-price school breakfasts and lunches. It wouldn’t be any fun any more to kill Representative Kadyn Wittman’s (D-15/Sioux Falls) modest but noble assault on hunger right away in committee, since Republicans have already done that to Rep. Wittman’s free-lunch bills three Sessions in a row. So to exert a more exquisite torture on their persistent Democratic colleague, I figured Republicans would let HB 1082 advance through the House, raise our hopes, and then sneeringly crush the bill in the Senate.
But when it cleared Senate Education on Monday, I thought maybe HB 1082 had the votes to get through the Senate. So, perhaps, did Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr (R-11/Sioux Falls), who stalled HB 1082 Tuesday by referring it off the floor to another committee hearing before Senate Appropriations.
Now I would think that if the bill had the votes, those votes would have held onto the bill, rejected Senator Karr’s ploy, and called a vote right then and there. But maybe just enough proponents figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a fiscal opinion from the Appropriators, just to make sure that spending $592,517 wouldn’t upset whatever delicate balancing act the budgeters are doing to cobble together the coming year’s $2.5 billion general fund. (HB 1082 represents 0.023%, less than one four-thousandth, of the proposed general fund).
But rendering a fiscal opinion is not what Senate Appropriations had in mind. After hearing testimony from both sides, including lead-off and rebuttal proponentry from rookie Republican Rhoden-appointee Senator Brandon Wipf (R-22/Lake Byron), arch-conservative Senator Taffy Howard (R-34/Rapid City) moved to table HB 1082. Tabling sets a bill aside without debate. Howard had fringe yahoos Woita and Carley plus Lapka and committee chair Otten on her side, barely outnumbering the four Senators—Democrat Foster and Republicans Vilhauer, MIskimins, and Zikmund—who wanted a straight vote on the bill itself.
If this tabling was the Republican plan to yank the rug out from under HB 1082, it didn’t work. Later Thursday, Senator Michael Rohl (R-1/Aberdeen) moved to smoke the free-lunch bill out of committee. Senator Rohl has “just done an absolutely amazing job all year” sifting through hundreds of bills. He said HB 1082 “may have slipped…. I don’t put any fault on the committee for that. I think we as the body probably should have done more to transmit our wishes, However, I do believe our body has the support for this bill.” He asked for “a real debate on the merits of the bill.”
Joint Rule 7-7 requires one third of the body to support a motion to smoke a bill out of committee. Smokeout isn’t a roll call vote, but the SDPB video shows 17 Senators standing, 5 more than the 12 needed… but one less than will be needed Monday to pass HB 1082… unless everyone but Senator Beal, who has missed the entire Session, is present, the vote ties 17–17, and Lieutenant Governor and Senate President Tony Venhuizen casts his second tie-breaking aye of the Session and sends HB 1082 for his boss’s signature.
If Republicans want to kill Rep. Wittman’s super-cheap plan to feed 10,000 more kids at no cost, they’ll have to do it in an open floor fight in the Senate Monday.
Republicans feeding children? Not on your life! They don’t mind killing scores of children in Iran. Deny, deny and lie, it’s what they do. They hit the girls school in Minab three times. They had ad to get all the girls after all.
The kids are being fed extensively and with fancy foods at all the schools. This seems more about pawning off local school district debt created by deadbeat parents onto statewide taxpayers. grudznick has said it before, people. Feed your kids and pay your debts.
Minnesota can afford it. The Republican’s in South Dakota like to lecture and their cheap.
So grudgenik, (spelling intentional), children are to suffer due to their “deadbeat parents” actions or lack of? Did you ever miss a school lunch due to lack of payment? I did. It wasn’t helpful.
Ah, yes. The fine, exquisite even, school lunch. Grud…please tell me you’re joking. It doesn’t matter if the parents are infact “eadbeats” or if they simply cannot afford as much because day-to-day expenses for everyone have increased at a far greater rate that our incomes have. And guess what jobs those “deadbeats” are working? All the low-paying retail and production and dairy jobs that we take for granted. Bully to you for not being a deadbeat, but by denying children healthy food each day is no different. Except you have more of a choice than they do. And you choose starving children.
As an aide I spend everyday helping with breakfast and lunch. Yes, the food has significantly improved from when i was in school. Occasionally something is served that would pass at Perkins. But no, the food isn’t “fancy”. Is it frustrating to see food being wasted? Yes. But restraunts waste 22 to 33 billion pounds of food annually. That’s food that people CHOSE.
To deny a child food is despicable. No child asks to be born or who to be born to or where to be born. Poverty is on the rise thanks to REPUBLICANS, who think a young 6-year-old should pull themselves up by the boot strap an accept it.
People claim the U.S. is exceptional. It is, it’s the only place I know when adults don’t care about children. What is happening in this country? Shame, shame, shame
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, deadbeat businesses, pay your workers a living wage so they can afford to feed their families.
@grud They are not fancy. The Trump admin and Congress haven’t done anything to alleviate cost of living and with the bs Iran war raging, things are about to get a lot more expensive, including food. Fertilizer and fuel costs will be rising. Hopefully farmers locked in contracts early.