Aren’t Free School Meals a Conservative's Dream Policy?

Free breakfast and lunch for every public school student — an idea associated more with countries like Sweden and Finland — should instead be viewed as a truly American policy that liberals and conservatives can both love. Want complete meritocracy? Then you should be furious that some kids can't focus in class or during tests because they're hungry. Want to compete globally? Eating better raises student test scores. Want to make America healthy again? Professional kitchen staff serving nutritionally balanced meals to everyone actually beats harried parents trying to cobble together a lunch sack. Want less government interference? Universal programs eliminate the invasive bureaucratic hassle of asking every student’s family about their income. School meal programs have even been found to lower grocery prices in local communities. Nine states have made free meals universal, and others have expanded access, so this ball is rolling. Read more: Solutions: Free School Meals - by Kathryn Anne Edwards https://www.kedits.com/p/solutions-free-school-meals [2024] How Free School Meals Went Mainstream - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/headway/how-free-school-meals-went-mainstream.html [2024] School Lunch Debt Statistics: Total + Costs per Student https://educationdata.org/school-lunch-debt [2025] Brown paper bags and ketchup as a Vegetable A story too good to check: Paul Ryan and the tale of the brown paper bag - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/03/06/a-story-too-good-to-check-paul-ryan-and-the-story-of-the-brown-paper-bag/ [2014] Why Michelle Obama Is Wrong on School Lunches | The Heritage Foundation https://www.heritage.org/public-health/commentary/why-michelle-obama-wrong-school-lunches [2014] U. S. Holds The Ketchup In Schools - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1981/09/26/us-holds-the-ketchup-in-schools/9ffd029a-17f5-4e8c-ab91-1348a44773ee/ [1981] U. S. Federal Register from 1981 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1981-09-04/pdf/FR-1981-09-04.pdf [see page 49]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:30Speaker 02

  And let's do a moment of silence for all of the-

• 0:33Robin Rauzi?

  I walked two miles to school in the snow.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  All the moms and grandmas and granddads and dads out there who walked 40 miles to the school.

• 0:41Robin Rauzi?

  I didn't walk 40 miles. I did walk to school.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Uphill both ways, y'all.

• 0:45Robin Rauzi?

  In the snow.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Hello, and welcome to Optimist Economy. I'm Catherine.

• 0:56Robin Rauzi?

  I'm Robin.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  On this show, we believe the US economy can be better, and we talk about how to get there, one problem and solution at a time.

• 1:10Robin Rauzi?

  I like that you don't have that memorized, that you're actually still reading it.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  No, I have to put it on every time.

• 1:15Robin Rauzi?

  I know.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Others would be like, hello, and welcome to Catherine, Optimist, I'm Economy. Nothing about me is good for radio, is all I'm gonna say.

• 1:27Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. At the top of our show, we make a few announcements. Can I go first?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can come down.

• 1:36Robin Rauzi?

  So in a few weeks, we will be recording another Q and A episode. So if you have a question for The Economist on this podcast, send it to us. Send it to us by email at [email protected].

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Wait, they can ask you a question too, though, right?

• 1:53Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know what they would ask me a question about, but they can. Sure. Or you can call us and leave us a voicemail and we will play it on the podcast. Now, I know you're driving or you're off gardening. We will also put this phone number in our newsletter, but it is 202-643-0295. Over to you.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Okay, great. We also have a website, optimist economy.com, where there's a whole bunch of stuff on it, but mainly just waits for you to give us money, which we will take and we appreciate and enjoy. And in fact, Robin has some fun news on that front.

• 2:32Robin Rauzi?

  So first of all, this episode brought to you in part by our new spiritual sponsor, Kevin in Melrose, Massachusetts, but also that we had a donor who donated at the $7.25 monthly level, which is of course, the federal minimum wage. And nicely done, nicely done.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  This is so well done.

• 2:53Robin Rauzi?

  We will, I'm considering trying to make that an official donor level, $7.25 a month, but it does commit you to raising that when the federal minimum wage goes up.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 3:05Robin Rauzi?

  So, you know.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Putting our optimism on the line, huh?

• 3:09Robin Rauzi?

  Exactly.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Is this putting, is this maybe one of the rare instances of putting our mouth where the money is?

• 3:18Robin Rauzi?

  All right. Anything else?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 3:22Robin Rauzi?

  Okay. Segment two.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Redcon.

• 3:26Robin Rauzi?

  Redcon. If you're actually new to the show, Redcon stands for retroactive continuity. And this is where we reflect on things that we talked about in previous episodes.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Or fixed things we said that were wrong. We haven't had one of those in a while though, to be fair, if you've been following along on the Redcon. I have an important Redcon, which was that I mentioned that Charlie Wilson's War is an outstanding Philip Seymour Hoffman role.

• 3:52Robin Rauzi?

  You, you said it was a top three performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  And I stand by that statement. And I rewatched the movie since and I still stand by it because everything he says is like quotable and amazing, but I think I would retcon to say it's a good Hanks movie, too. Tom Hanks stars as Charlie Wilson. He's the main character and I think I didn't give enough like love or flowers to Tom Hanks and that he's, it's a pretty good Tom Hanks movie. I don't know if it's a top three Tom Hanks movie, but it's, it's certainly a good Hanks movie.

• 4:25Robin Rauzi?

  To which I replied.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  To which Robin was like, actually.

• 4:29Robin Rauzi?

  So I hadn't seen the movie. I watched it after our last conversation. We watched it last weekend. I, I find Hanks miscast. Now I just want to say, I love Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks, among other things, is a fantastic Angelino.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  Robin, we are going to lose listeners. They're going to be dropping like flies.

• 4:47Robin Rauzi?

  No, no, no. Love Tom Hanks.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  These comedians don't like Tom.

• 4:51Robin Rauzi?

  No, no, no. I love Tom Hanks, but I think he's such a nice guy and the character is a womanizer and a drinker. And I just don't think he's, I don't think he was the guy to put in that role.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Who would you cast?

• 5:04Robin Rauzi?

  I know.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  If we're going to be red, if we're gonna, if you're gonna throw around such shade to Tom Hanks as Charlie Wilson.

• 5:10Robin Rauzi?

  I actually, okay, so Andy suggests Bill Paxton and I'm not good at coming up with, I'm not, I'm not one of these, you know, fantasy movie casting.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  That is a podcast my sister and I want to have together is just fantasy book adaptation movie casting. Yeah.

• 5:26Robin Rauzi?

  But I actually watched it and thought, well, Philip Seymour Hoffman should have played Charlie Wilson.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  I'm just glad this movie was made when it was because now it would have been like Glenn Powell in every role.

• 5:41Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Every episode, we like to make sure we put in something that gets people really mad at us. That's unrelated to economics.

• 5:48Robin Rauzi?

  It's good. It's, it's, it's good for engagement.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  It's good for engagement. Like when I said I wanted to have either no mean yelling or a quiet section of stadiums.

• 5:56Robin Rauzi?

  People like jump on that.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Just stay at home, you entitled bastard.

• 6:02Robin Rauzi?

  Seriously.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, that my fake law.

• 6:06Robin Rauzi?

  My fake executive order.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  That's just kind of made up. Was so offensive to you.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  So yeah, let's, you gotta play into the nego algo.

• 6:16Robin Rauzi?

  Lean into it, yeah, okay. All right. Terms and conditions.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I don't have anything.

• 6:22Robin Rauzi?

  You got nothing, okay. I looked up death knell. Now, it's not that because I didn't totally know what a death knell is, but it was used in a sentence in such a way with the verb, we are witnessing the death knell. But I went down this rabbit hole about these bells. And so what I did not know is that the death knell was one of three bells. And if actually, the way that we use this phrase metaphorically to mean, it's like a warning of something is about to die away, would actually have been what's called the passing bell. The passing bell was like you were sick and expected to die. It was a little risky because, you know, maybe the person wouldn't die. And then the death knell was the bell when the person actually died. And then there's something called the lich bell, which was when they buried you in the ground.

• 7:08Robin Rauzi?

  These were in the Middle Ages in England and they also would sometimes have very specific patterns depending on who it was who died. So like, three sets of three bells might mean a bishop had died or a noble person had died. So anyway, they were like the news alerts of their day. Of letting people in the village know who a prominent had died in their community.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so I think, I think like going back to the theme of the show being optimism, like there's also some pretty great things about being alive not in the Middle Ages. I'll take today's problems over the complicated bell system that's developed because so many people die all the time. I'm gonna take a minimum wage in need of raising over that whole bell.

• 7:54Robin Rauzi?

  This is like village life. This isn't, you know, Houston.

• 7:59Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Wait, so then how is death knell correctly used today?

• 8:03Robin Rauzi?

  So death knell is often used, it's got a whole second meaning, meaning the warning of something is about to go away.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  So it's the warning and not the like, it's happened.

• 8:13Robin Rauzi?

  Right. As opposed to, yeah, it's already too late.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  So if it's a death knell, it's not too late.

• 8:17Robin Rauzi?

  I know, which is weird because, but that is how people use it.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Okay, so that's good to know for optimism that we might be at a death knell, but like, here's where our podcast is of like, hey, just because it's the death knell, that doesn't mean.

• 8:28Robin Rauzi?

  That's right.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  It's not the lich bell.

• 8:30Robin Rauzi?

  It's not the lich bell, which is we are dead and in the ground. No, not yet.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Is that the one that tied a string to people's finger in case they were buried alive and they would ring the bell?

• 8:39Robin Rauzi?

  No, but.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  That's a whole other bell.

• 8:42Robin Rauzi?

  There's like a whole lot of bells. They would also ring handbells as they carried the bodies to the cemetery to protect your soul from being, I don't know, attacked by evil spirits.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Sure. So I'm just gonna reiterate that.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Being alive today.

• 8:55Robin Rauzi?

  Not in the middle ages.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Being at a death knell, still some optimism there and we're gonna jump on it and.

• 9:02Robin Rauzi?

  Life after antibiotics, all so good. Okay.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  So that's, that's really not related to our centerpiece, even though it is some interesting food for thought. I just thought the last few episodes, we've been dealing with some hard stuff of like GDP and measurement and underemployment. So we just wanted to.

• 9:19Robin Rauzi?

  A lot of numbers.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  A lot of numbers and like definitions of measurements and it wasn't necessarily like uplifting to know that our economy is so complex and how it can mistreat people. Sometimes it's hard to measure. So we wanted to bring it back as a real winner.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Today's episode is about a truly banger policy that we wanted to talk about in the fall because a lot of people are sending their kids back to school. A lot of people are going back to school themselves and.

• 9:51Robin Rauzi?

  You're gonna just tell people what it is? Are you, you're gonna get there?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  No, I have another six minutes.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Gotta give Sophie something to do.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  It's free school breakfast and lunch for every public school kid in the United States.

• 10:08Robin Rauzi?

  Also known as?

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Universal school meals.

• 10:11Robin Rauzi?

  Universal school meals.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  There is such a thing as a free lunch when the government buys it for your kids. What I wanted to talk about with you, Robin, was I actually think that this is a very American thing to do and that it would be like at first brush and certainly first blush?

• 10:30Robin Rauzi?

  Brush.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Blush? Blush? Okay. I think I'm just not going to say it. So definitely, when you first think about it and the history of how school lunches have been approached, it's like, this is communist. This is like the government interfering in parents' lives and government encroachment of the welfare state. But I actually think if you got down to it, this is an incredibly American policy. And so I want to talk about all the good things it does and then kind of sell it as even your most like ardent libertarian should be for free school lunch.

• 11:02Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Okay. So back in 1946.

• 11:08Robin Rauzi?

  Perfect. Perfect.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  This is like World War II. So we're like-

• 11:13Robin Rauzi?

  Post-war?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Uh, kind of during the war, but the first entry of the federal government into school lunches was right after World War II. It was in 1946. And it was a direct result of the fact that so many conscript and draftees that showed up to fight in World War II were dramatically underweight. To the point of like failing fitness exams because they were so malnourished.

• 11:35Robin Rauzi?

  Well, was the depression too, I guess.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was coming off of a not great period and, and, uh, I mean, definitely you could see this as, so we don't have enough army bots. So we need it. We're only reason why we're going to give kids food is so we can have future army bots. But it was also one of the first large scale health tests given to children in the United States was the millions that showed up to fight in World War II. And then giving them a basic physical was one of the like biggest data points we'd ever gotten about the basic health of US children. And it was not good. And so they passed in 46 a school lunch program to start helping. And the, the school lunch program from 1946 until roughly 2010 was-

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Not that different. It was basically if you are poor, the government will buy you lunch at a fixed per meal cost with some nutrition requirements attached. And if you are like not poor, poor, but like not doing great, they will give you a discount on lunch. And this is the free reduced lunch, which is standard in the US. You have to apply for it. You have to fill out a form with your school. The school has to do an income test. They have some type of school or citywide ticketing system of how you're billed for school lunch, you know, what color ticket you get to decide like how subsidized your meal is. And some people are actually charged for lunch. They don't realize they don't get free lunch anymore.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Then they have school lunch debts. Like it is really a means tested program that is administered by schools.

• 13:08Robin Rauzi?

  And administered at the individual family level. I mean, that's, that's certainly the school meal program I remember from my public schools.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when I've talked about-

• 13:17Robin Rauzi?

  Not yesterday.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  No, no. When I've talked about school lunches on social media, I, the number of people who respond and say how mortifying it was to have the red ticket, which meant that you were poor enough to have the free lunch. So you had to like walk into the cafeteria with the red ticket. And the kids who paid, whose parents paid for lunch had the green ticket. And so you just had a way of like literally putting up a little measure to say like, here comes the poor kid. She's that one. There she goes. And how traumatizing this was for them in like eighth grade to have to have the poor kid ticket. So a really big change to the program came in 2010 when Congress passed the Healthy Hungry Free Kid Act. And the act did-

• 14:02Robin Rauzi?

  What is that called again?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  The Healthy Hungry Free Kid Act.

• 14:05Robin Rauzi?

  The Healthy Hungry Free-

• 14:07Speaker 02

  HHFKA.

• 14:09Robin Rauzi?

  I just, it just doesn't make any sense together.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  I know. And for whatever reason, my mind goes to hungry, hungry hippos, the Healthy Hungry Free Kid.

• 14:16Robin Rauzi?

  It's not hunger free?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Hunger free, hungry free. Oh God, it could be. I say the words pretty similarly. But I wouldn't know which one it is. But let's find out. This is why God invented the internet. All right. Healthy.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  It is hunger. Because damn, Robin, you're a good editor.

• 14:37Robin Rauzi?

  That was such a sharp pickup. It's like, that's the weirdest name because it does sound like Hungry Hippos.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act.

• 14:47Robin Rauzi?

  Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  It's still HHFKA for those of you who prefer the acronym.

• 14:52Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, so 2010, this is the Obama administration.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Obama administration, and it basically does two things to radically change school lunch. One of them is that it adds actual nutrition requirements.

• 15:07Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, I remember. I remember that being a big fight.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  It was a huge fight, but it was like, you have to serve whole grains. And the vegetables-

• 15:13Robin Rauzi?

  And fruits and vegetables.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  The fruits and vegetables have to be fresh. And you have to ramp this up. And that kind of set off a like, series of policy announcements and regulations where every year, they they kind of make updates to the nutritional standards. And so even even in the last year of the Biden administration, they were putting a cap on how much saturated fat, or salt, or sugar could be added to foods that are served in the cafeteria. That's the big thing. And I mean, if you go back to the school lunches origins, I mean, it's it's health. Like, this is a public health intervention that kids aren't healthy, and we have a way to intervene pretty conveniently when they're on site and hungry, that if we give them healthy food, we can we can make this health intervention. And that was the

• 15:58Speaker 02

  whole motivation, even for the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. Now I want to call it the Healthy Hunger Games Act.

• 16:09Robin Rauzi?

  Just so you put the kids in the cafeteria, but there's only one meal.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Man, this act was was aimed at childhood obesity, which has been rising and the-

• 16:22Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, so that was just about making the food healthier?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:26Robin Rauzi?

  Making sure more people got it, or whatever?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  No, no, the big impetus for the bill was, we have a scourge of childhood obesity that's getting worse. And so we need to make sure that if we have them two meals a day, and they need help buying it anyway, like, we need to make this food a lot healthier. But there were provisions in the law that changed what's called the community eligibility provision, where they told schools, listen, if you have enough kids that were going to be eligible for free and reduced lunch, we can just certify the whole school.

• 16:56Robin Rauzi?

  Right.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  And what the community eligibility provisions in the bill- Just changed that component so that a lot more schools would qualify. And the expansion of the community eligibility provisions, they rolled this out as experiments. So, once the bill came into law, states kind of like took the lead of like changing eligibility or changing nutrition to kind of like learn as we go. Like, the big headline of the law was all the nutritional changes. And for what it's worth, y'all might remember this as Michelle's Lunch Law. She was a huge proponent of it.

• 17:25Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, that's what I remember.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  It was part of her Let's Move campaign, and conservatives hated this law and referred to it as Michelle's Lunch Law. You know, they basically say that she's trying to co-parent your kids because she's arrogant. But that got most of the attention. The community eligibility provisions were a little bit more of an experimentation of, let's roll this out kind of one state at a time, let them take advantage of it and see if they like it. And so, it was a kind of expansion into universal school meals that wasn't like, I guess it wasn't like...

• 17:58Robin Rauzi?

  It wasn't a mandate.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  So, we start seeing school districts and schools apply for community eligibility provisions in really large numbers, larger than we'd ever seen before. And so, it starts the single largest expansion to free lunch and breakfast that the US has ever seen in schools. And because it was rolled out in different states, because the thresholds varied over time and the community eligibility provisions were set at different levels, you just have a lot of like variation of when schools and school districts started to do this, which means that heartless economists like myself...

• 18:32Robin Rauzi?

  I have to say, this is a researcher bonanza.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Sometimes I've like looked at this and I'm like, did an economist tell them to do this? Like, don't let everybody get it, make it random for the first five years so I can get that top five journal publication and we can find out what school meals do.

• 18:48Robin Rauzi?

  I'm sure there was a lot of studies then.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  There were a lot of studies. And the studies, like, they're so good. So, universal school meals, under the provision of healthy, hunger-free kids, that has higher quality, here's what it does: raises test scores on both end-of-year tests and grades. It does this on two margins. The first margin is that it reduces hunger, that raises test scores. And then, the second margin is that it makes meals healthier, which also raises test scores. So no food versus food, food does better on test. Yeah. Uh, unhealthy food versus healthy food, healthy food does better on test. And those are, that's one reason why the results on higher test scores wasn't just concentrated amongst

• 19:34Speaker 02

  low-income children, it went up the income distribution and hit a lot of middle-income kids, too.

• 19:39Robin Rauzi?

  Hmm, because they were getting better quality food for lunch.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Because they were getting better quality food for lunch, which stings if you're a parent.

• 19:45Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  The school was better at getting them to eat healthy than you were, but honestly, any parent will tell you it's a process in being humbled every day, every hour of every day.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Okay, so one, improves academic performance. Two, kids actually did eat healthier. So it's not just that the meal, they put healthy food in front of them and then it became a healthy trash can. Like, the kids actually did eat healthier. And they measured this in a couple ways. I mean, the USDA at one point had a study where they went out and just measured how much food was being thrown away in cafeterias. To see if the nutritional food was just going straight to the trash can. But no, the kids ate healthier, they ate more fruits, they ate more vegetables, they ate more whole grains. Schools loved it because the administrative burden essentially went away.

• 20:32Robin Rauzi?

  And which must have been a nightmare.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  I mean, I can't imagine how awful it is to be a school administrator and then are getting like, having to do income, I mean, sometimes they would do an automatic of like if the person was on food stamps, but then they still had to like.

• 20:46Robin Rauzi?

  Ask the family if they're on food stamps.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yes, that's which, I, and then they had to come up with a system of how they apportioned the free versus not free meal to the poor kids they have, like the person who told me about the little red ticket that haunted her in high school because she was one of the poor kids.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  But schools didn't have to do that. Everybody got lunch and all they had to do was find a vendor to buy it off of.

• 21:09Robin Rauzi?

  Didn't, but they still had to determine that they had enough people who would qualify to be part of the community eligibility.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Provision.

• 21:19Robin Rauzi?

  Provision.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Yes, so they did have to do that.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  And then, once they hit community eligibility provision, I want to say they didn't have to do it anymore. But at the same time, what ends up happening is that this is so popular that states start to make up the difference.

• 21:34Robin Rauzi?

  They're just like, just do it, yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  States are like, we do not need to wait on the federal government. Like, this is raising test scores and reducing obesity of children. Like, we need to get this money out the door. And so, states kind of overtake the federal standards and they just start giving it to everybody. So, some of the data comes from the federal rollout of where we know these are so good. Some of the data comes from when the states take it over.

• 21:55Robin Rauzi?

  Got it, got it.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  It also reduces the budgeting burden on parents because they don't have to provide those meals anymore. So, that's more money for families.

• 22:03Robin Rauzi?

  Lots of time, effort, energy.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  My god, the emotional burden of trying to make lunch for children, oh.

• 22:09Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  We just switched from a daycare that provided two meals and a snack on site to having to pack two meals and a snack for our kids. And it's, I mean, it's such hell.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  And they don't eat as good. Like, if 10 little three-year-olds are sitting at a preschool and everybody has broccoli in front of them, it's different from you're the only kid with carrots and broccoli and the other kids are like chowing down on a fruit by the foot. You know, peer pressure helps with doing things, especially when they're really young. And also, I'm just not good at it. And you can't bring peanut butter into like any establishment with children. So, like, you make 10 meals a week to be sent to your kid's school that you can't prepare on site, you can put an ice pack in the bag, but you can't include peanut butter. Like, it's such hell.

• 23:07Robin Rauzi?

  God, I, I, I lived on peanut butter for at least eight years.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Anyway, we shouldn't bring our emotions to the table.

• 23:15Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, no.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Let me go back to being an economist and give you the most econ-y result that they found.

• 23:21Robin Rauzi?

  So, the kids get better test scores.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  And are healthier.

• 23:24Robin Rauzi?

  And are healthier.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  The schools have less to deal with, with the administration of the program.

• 23:29Robin Rauzi?

  Burden is less.

• 23:31Speaker 02

  Families save money.

• 23:32Robin Rauzi?

  Family save money.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Okay, and then the other big finding was that it can reduce food price at the grocery store.

• 23:40Robin Rauzi?

  It reduces food prices at the grocery store?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:44Robin Rauzi?

  How?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Because it removes demand for food from the retail market to the wholesale market. And so in communities that had big expansions to universal school meals, local food retailers, they saw reductions in prices.

• 23:58Robin Rauzi?

  Huh.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  So it makes a grocery store cheaper for everybody if you take this big part of the market and shove it into wholesale from retail.

• 24:05Robin Rauzi?

  That's really crazy, like that it would be that big a part of the grocery buying market in a town that...

• 24:12Speaker 02

  If you were on food stamps, they do not re-up food stamps on the first of the month. You do not give every person in your state on food stamps a re-up of food on the first of the month, because if you did it that way...

• 24:23Robin Rauzi?

  Everybody would go to the store on the same day.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  And grocery stores would raise prices to recognize that, especially for the foods that people on food stamps bought.

• 24:30Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  And in fact, when they used to do it that way, you could take scanner data from grocery stores and absolutely they had higher prices at the start of the month for bulk food, especially frozen food, that poor people would buy. And then at the end of the month, those prices would be a lot lower.

• 24:47Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  And so you could see like over the month movement in the price of goods that people on food stamps were more likely to buy based on when the food stamps were allotted. So it's like, alright, y'all, easy fix, like randomize it throughout the month.

• 25:00Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  But, okay, then they randomized it throughout the month, which means when you're on food stamps, you do not eat consistently over the month, because food stamps is never enough to cover everyone's meals. So typically, you eat best the first week.

• 25:15Robin Rauzi?

  At the beginning, yeah.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  And you eat worse the last week. And now, instead of that all being aligned, now that's like split up across the population. So... Group of researchers went in and they looked at kids SAT scores and backtracked it to where they were in their monthly food stamp allotment. And this is one of the like seminal findings of

• 25:35Speaker 02

  your SAT score is slightly lower if you had to take it the last week before you got food stamps as opposed to the first week. And that wasn't even school lunch.

• 25:44Robin Rauzi?

  Like who thought of that? That's like, it's genius. I mean, it's a study.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  It wasn't even school lunch. Like it was, it was food stamps, not even school lunch. So, so then, you know, you have that in hand and you're like, kids are doing worse on the SAT because food stamps aren't adequate. Give these kids meals twice a day at school. Like it becomes a really compelling argument. This is why I think it's ultimately a very American, like probably more conservative leaning argument is that if this economy in this country is truly about getting ahead on your own merit, you need to put meals in school because we have a very clear link from were you hungry to how well did you perform on a test? And you are letting rich kids who never have to worry about

• 26:30Speaker 02

  food get an advantage over poor kids based on how hungry they are. So if you truly think America is about meritocracy, then you cannot let kids like coast off of the fact that because they're well fed, they do better in school. Like you-

• 26:47Robin Rauzi?

  Not being hungry should be a level playing field.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Not being hungry should be a level playing field and let people's actual merits determine what happens to them in school because you're ranked in school. You're competing against other kids and you're, you shouldn't have to compete on your parents feeding you.

• 27:01Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Interesting. That's a fascinating study.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  This is my like first like big like conservative American argument of like, don't let the rich kids win. I don't know if that-

• 27:12Robin Rauzi?

  I don't know if it'll fly or not. Put good on you for trying.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  I just told you all this stuff that that school lunches do. And then these are the big findings. Like, there were other findings, too, that high school students had better, like, emotional well-being because there was less anxiety and stigma about being the kid with a red ticket. And like, that led to fewer, like, suspensions because they weren't getting as many fights.

• 27:34Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, creating essentially a more equal society within the four walls of a school building might teach us a lot also about society in general, but I can see how that would be beneficial in the classroom as well as on test scores and things.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  But sometimes the argument that is never said, but probably thought on some level is that the more the government helps children, the less of an advantage rich kids have.

• 28:00Robin Rauzi?

  Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's never phrased that way, right? It's always phrased like, you're creating dependency of poor people.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I'm creating dependency amongst, like, 11-year-old kids.

• 28:13Robin Rauzi?

  To eat food.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  To eat food. Yeah, it's the welfare.

• 28:17Robin Rauzi?

  They're dependent on their food.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  The welfare state run them up. Next, you're gonna tell me I'm gonna have to transport them to school on a big bus that I have to buy.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Sorry, it's just, these kids are takers. This is what always gets me when they're like, you can't invest in children, you create dependence. I'm like, of the grubby little takers that are children? They, like, eat money.

• 28:38Robin Rauzi?

  They're gonna get used to it. Have you had them at home? They're takers.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  It's like, they're takers no matter what. But it's, I don't think people understand or would be able to process that their kid's advantage does not come from their kid's brilliant or hard work, but that other kids are hungry. Like, oh, your kid's at the top of the class? Statistically, that means they're least likely to be hungry at home. So, like, good for you. Like, I don't think people can internalize how much advantage they get from other kids being hungry. And then if you put it that way.

• 29:10Robin Rauzi?

  The cognitive dissonance on that is really high.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  No, I mean, being a parent is already being, I mean, like, you're on a knife's edge. So, there's so many aspects of parenthood of, like, I'm on a knife's edge, you're people I've tried to make a good life for my children, and now it's my fault that other kids are hungry. No, but, like, other kids are hungry and this, you know, don't be opposed to free school meals.

• 29:32Robin Rauzi?

  So there are like nine states now that have universal, totally universal meal programs in the whole state. And California is one, I know. Maine, Colorado, New Mexico.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Minnesota.

• 29:44Robin Rauzi?

  Minnesota, of course.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:46Robin Rauzi?

  Tim Walz made that a big part of their campaign.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  I will say, I have talked to congressional staffers who are like, universal school meals is, I would give it like a decade, tops, before it's everywhere in the US because schools love it so much.

• 29:59Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  And it's also a way for the federal government to give money to schools that improves test scores that state governments don't have to raise.

• 30:07Robin Rauzi?

  State, you mean state governments don't have to raise the money?

• 30:10Speaker 02

  No, I mean, not if the federal government paid for all of it. The states that currently have universal school meals are paying for it, but if the federal, if the federal government was like, the feds are just gonna buy everybody lunch.

• 30:19Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  It is the cheapest way we have ever found to increase test scores.

• 30:24Robin Rauzi?

  Don't get me wrong, I want to feed kids, but it's not cheap. I mean, it would be something like, what, $40 billion a year or something?

• 30:31Speaker 02

  I mean, right now, the federal government spends around $25 billion. Cause it's, I wanna say it's 20 now, but it's projected to go up to 27 per year, so you could just bookend it between them. And there's not a small difference, right? But it's, I mean, even if it were 80 billion, that's nothing. Not for the federal government's perspective. For reference, the one big, beautiful bill includes $460 billion a year in tax cuts. So that's, I mean, that's something, at least nine universal school meal programs we just passed and a tax cut. And that's a high estimate for how much this would cost.

• 31:11Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. So here's, okay, I mean, maybe this is not important to your argument, but schools these days, they're hiring Sodexo or somebody to come in and provide food. They don't have, we don't have lunch ladies cooking in the back in, in commercial kitchens in schools anymore.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  We do, it depends on how they buy it.

• 31:28Robin Rauzi?

  Hmm.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  So some places, they buy, I don't wanna say it's equivalent of a meal kit, but it's not necessarily far off, where like, they will deliver everything and you prepare it on-site.

• 31:39Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Or, you know, apportion it on-site, so like, they're gonna deliver-

• 31:42Robin Rauzi?

  Like Blue Apron for schools.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Kinda like Blue Apron for schools, but like, they're not gonna deliver apple slices, they're gonna deliver like, 100 apples that didn't have to be sliced. And what happened in the inflation spike was that the amount that they were getting from the federal government for food was not keeping up with what they were being charged for food. And so there was a ton of pushback that these nutritional standards had to be rolled back because they were being forced to buy food that they couldn't afford.

• 32:10Robin Rauzi?

  It's too expensive to have good food.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  It's too expensive to have good food. And actually, this all echoes ketchup as a vegetable. Should we talk about ketchup as a vegetable?

• 32:18Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, sure. Let's talk about ketchup as a vegetable.

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Were you around for ketchup as a vegetable? Like, is this anything you remember?

• 32:24Robin Rauzi?

  Me? Oh, yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  You do?

• 32:25Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, I don't think I ate ketchup as a vegetable, but I remember the argument about ketchup as a vegetable.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  I just think it's really, it's funny now in hindsight. And it's also like, what a gift to give child advocates for decades to come that it's like, well, remember you thought ketchup was a vegetable, so we don't listen to you. So, y'all, Reagan wins in 80. In 81, he wants to cut taxes and cut government spending and cut out the bloat and so on. And so he wants to cut, it's like a billion to $2 billion from school meals, which is at that time on a free reduced lunch.

• 32:59Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  It's a lot. But he thinks that it's not the food that's costing money, it's all of the administrative waste that goes with it in the federal government bloat. And so he announces that he's going to cut funds to help schools buy lunch, but it won't affect lunch. That they're going to save money from like making the program more efficient and updating the standards. And the kind of argument they make is that if the standards for nutrition are too exacting, it's more expensive. So you need to give states and schools like more freedom.

• 33:30Robin Rauzi?

  Loosen up the nutritional standards and it'll get cheaper.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I pulled up the Federal Register from 1981, in which they said...

• 33:38Robin Rauzi?

  Who's the "they" here?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  This is the US Department of Agriculture proposes in the Federal Register, which is where the government goes to post rules. They have a section on meat and meat alternates, including nuts, seeds, yogurt, tofu, equivalencies of cooked dry beans and peas or eggs, main dish and other items. Remember, this is your small government Republican itemizing all this. But under fruits and vegetables, that they're supposed to have two servings of fruits or vegetables a day, they say in a section on concentrates...

• 34:10Speaker 02

  An additional proposed change in crediting policy would allow vegetables and fruit concentrates to be credited on a single strength reconstituted basis, rather than on the basis of the actual volume served. For example, one tablespoon of tomato paste could be credited as one fourth a cup of single strength tomato juice. Previously, it was only credited as one tablespoon, the volume as served. This change eliminates the so-called water requirement. While not specified in regulations, this policy would be addressed in program aids. And people were like, yo, that's ketchup counts as a vegetable.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  And they didn't really deny, like, yeah, so this became ketchup as a vegetable. They were like absolutely torn through the mud on this one. Democrats like went to schools and had lunch.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  But they were trying to like, they were just trying to cut costs and cut corners on food. And so they, yeah, I mean, you can read Washington Post articles and New York Times articles at the time of like, they're just like gleefully trying, or they're trying to not seem as gleeful as the like the infighting.

• 35:21Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, this all got rehashed when the new, when the new food nutrition rules went in. Like, like, it will never be forgotten, I don't think, in the lore of school meals in America.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  No, no, it will never be like.

• 35:32Robin Rauzi?

  I mean, you might as well just serve, what'd you say, fruit is a mile, like fruit leathers, you know, as, it's fruit. It's so concentrated.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  I think my favorite quote came from Senator John Hines of Pennsylvania, whose family owns the HJ Hines company. He said, "Ketchup is a condiment. This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I have ever heard of, and I suppose I need not add that I know something about ketchup and relish, or at least did at one time."

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Excellent.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  I'm so, I'm so happy.

• 36:09Robin Rauzi?

  So it was like the ketchup lobby trying to like slip this in.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  No, the Hines family was like, this is ridiculous. Senator John Hines of Pennsylvania. The idea that like making kids have healthy food represents government bloat and waste is how school lunches have always been presented. And I, I don't know how salient this is, but I've always thought that it's much harder to be cheap. Like it requires a lot more getting your fingers dirty. And like, I don't want to give everybody food and I don't want to give them good food. So here's like a 15-page concept paper on how to get around nutritional regulations. And like, I need to look at every single school kid in America and like see what their parents make and get into it.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  And it's like, you know, if you just gave everybody the same food, it's actually a lot less federal government interference in people's lives. It's a lot less federal government kind of like going in and making decisions. It's like, here's the rules, here's the money, go forth.

• 37:12Robin Rauzi?

  Go forth. Make some nice bean and cheese burritos or whatever it is you're gonna make. But I do think it's worth saying that nobody's required to eat school lunches.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  You don't have to eat school lunch.

• 37:24Robin Rauzi?

  You do not have to eat it.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  We also have in this country, millions of dollars of school lunch debt.

• 37:29Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Where people owe school districts money for schools, for meals that their kids ate and they haven't paid their school lunch bill.

• 37:37Robin Rauzi?

  This became kind of a big deal right after the pandemic because everybody got free meals during the pandemic, right?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  They, yeah, they expanded a lot of the meal intervention, like the, the summer meals program, where if you're on food stamps and free and reduced lunch, then you can come to the school and get like a week's worth of meals in the summer.

• 37:54Robin Rauzi?

  Mm-hmm. But they didn't do any, there were no changes to the actual free and reduced programs themselves?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know. There was so much changes to food.

• 38:03Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  In the pandemic that I could not be reliably called upon to say what they are. And then states plus up those changes and then some states rejected them because they said they didn't want a welfare state.

• 38:15Robin Rauzi?

  A welfare state with, they wanted hungry children.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Hungry children. Man, this is also, hold on. I mean, the thing about school lunch is that it really does bring out, I don't mean this to sound like this, it can bring out the absolute worst in conservatives, because you're talking about hungry kids and you have to make an argument of like, no, no, no.

• 38:33Robin Rauzi?

  They're not that hungry.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  It's better that kids are hungry. So there's also an amazing fact checker about this with Paul Ryan.

• 38:40Robin Rauzi?

  Paul Ryan, the congressman?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Paul Ryan, the congressman from Wisconsin, who then became vice presidential candidate, and then was speaker, um, okay, Paul Ryan, in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in March of 2014, said, "The left is making a big mistake here. What they're offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul. The American people want more than that. This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my buddy, Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a very poor family, and every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government

• 39:21Speaker 02

  program. He told Eloise, he didn't want a free lunch, he wanted his own lunch, one in a brown paper bag, just like the other kids. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown paper bag had someone who cared for him. This is what the left does not understand."

• 39:39Robin Rauzi?

  What on God's earth?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, is it true that Eloise Anderson, Secretary of Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, ever met such a child? Basically, she kind of made it up.

• 39:51Robin Rauzi?

  So she did tell him this?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Anderson has told the story, you know, a little boy told me once that what was important to him is that he didn't want school lunch, he wanted a brown bag, because the brown bag that he brought with his lunch in it has meant that his mom cared about him. I mean, the kid wouldn't want a brown bag if everybody was getting a school meal, just saying.

• 40:08Robin Rauzi?

  Right, yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  But RIP Wonkette. They wondered if it's possible that she actually lifted this from a 2011 book called The Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff, which is about a busy executive and her relationship with an 11-year-old homeless panhandle named Maurice. His mother was a drug Addict in jail who had stolen things and cashed in food stamps to pay for drugs. And at one point, Schroff offers to buy Maurice lunch every day so he won't go hungry. And they have a whole little exchange that comes straight out of the book that has to do with having a brown paper bag, meaning that your mom cared about you. So then they actually ask Eloise Anderson, is it possible that you took this from a book

• 40:53Speaker 02

  and didn't actually talk to a little boy who brought up a brown paper bag? And her communications director responded, in the course of giving live testimony, Secretary Anderson misspoke, what she intended to say was the following. Once I heard someone say what was important to him as a boy was that he didn't want school lunch, he wanted a brown bag because the brown bag that he brought with his lunch meant that his mom cared about him. She was referring to a television interview which she had seen of young Maurice.

• 41:24Robin Rauzi?

  So wait, was Maurice a real kid?

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:27Robin Rauzi?

  So the book is a nonfiction book?

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Let's see, The Invisible Thread, A True Story of 11-Year-Old Panhandler, A Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny by Laura Schroff. S-C-H-R-O-F-F. Schroff? Schroff? So when Eloise Anderson, then at the state government in Wisconsin, was testifying in front of Congress, she passed off as a firsthand story, talking to a little boy about school lunch, something that she had read in a book that Paul Ryan then picked up and said at the Congressional Conservative.

• 42:05Robin Rauzi?

  And this is how policy gets made.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the left is making a mistake here. Remember, it's the left making a mistake.

• 42:16Robin Rauzi?

  I come from, you know, a place that believes in the power of storytelling, right? But if the story is not true, it's like what you say all the time about, you know, if you don't diagnose the problem right, like if you're just making shit up.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  And also, the boy isn't saying, "I don't want lunch from school."

• 42:32Robin Rauzi?

  No.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Though, it's like, the whole conversation about is how he wants a mom that cares about him. And that that's what the brown bag signifies, and like, that's why he wants to have a lunch, because he wants his mom to care about him, but she doesn't.

• 42:43Robin Rauzi?

  It's not like he's like, "I don't want school lunch."

• 42:46Speaker 02

  It's not like he's up there advocating of like, "Look, people like me become dependents if you made sure I had food at age 11." And he totally conceptualized the school lunch debate, which is why it was appropriate for Paul Ryan to say that a school lunch feeds the belly and starves the soul.

• 43:02Robin Rauzi?

  So gross.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  It's so gross, and so funny. The fact check article, it's from 2014, is "A Story Too Good to Check: Paul Ryan and the Tale of the Brown Paper Bag."

• 43:17Robin Rauzi?

  We'll have to link to that.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  So I, I understand that the way that rhetoric has brought Americans up into this point of now we have a set of states that are providing universal school meals and generating so much evidence of how beneficial it is, that it doesn't matter how good, it doesn't matter how good we show it to be, or how helpful it is, there are going to be people that are opposed to it on principle, and I think what I'm trying to make the case for is like...

• 43:44Robin Rauzi?

  The principle...

• 43:45Speaker 02

  The principle...

• 43:46Robin Rauzi?

  The principle's American, yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Your principle should be for this. Like, if your principle is fairness, and if your principle is fairness in having people succeed on their own merits, like, you need to be for school lunch, for universal school meals.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  And if you don't want the government being so large and so interfering, you know, it's a lot easier for the federal government to write a check than it is to root around in tens of millions of people's bank accounts and income statements.

• 44:18Robin Rauzi?

  I know, when we talk about red tape.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  It means testing is really hard to do cheaply or efficiently, and I'm never going back to having to like, divide kids up and find out their parents' income. Like, this reduces administrative burden, it reduces government interference, it's just, here's the check, buy the food, raise the test scores, make it easier for families, and then like, here's the nutrition. Like, I, I understand that they don't like that the federal government dictates nutrition. But that's, that's like.

• 44:44Robin Rauzi?

  Given your make America healthy again mom core around the country, why not?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  We can align on school lunch. I think school lunch is something that can bring a lot of people from a lot of sides of the political spectrum and the Maha spectrum together.

• 45:00Robin Rauzi?

  Get them all together.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Because it just, it hits so many marks. And if you could put any person in this country in front of me and ask me to sell school lunch in between like the scores and the health and the food and the funding and the admin burden and the retail prices and family budgets, like I could find a way to sell school lunches to people.

• 45:20Robin Rauzi?

  I have a pie chart for you.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  As long as it's not Paul Ryan, because he would prefer not to starve the soul.

• 45:25Robin Rauzi?

  He would prefer that our souls be fed by fasting.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  I will give him an empty brown paper bag upon meeting him.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  With a note inside that says, your mother doesn't love you.

• 45:46Robin Rauzi?

  That's up there with your sash for mansion. Okay.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  We're coming up with like the seeds of reality show of like Catherine meets politicians who she's like decided to hate with the fire of a thousand suns. It's just me giving it, or just like, this is like Timothy Geithner all over again.

• 46:06Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Have you ever watched the rehearsal? Maybe we need to get that guy, Nathan Fielder. Yeah. We need to get Nathan Fielder on the, on the case.

• 46:16Robin Rauzi?

  So you can rehearse this.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  I guess it's a little like Godfather-esque. It's like not the dead horse in the bed, like the empty paper.

• 46:22Robin Rauzi?

  It's the empty bag.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  The empty paper bag. It's about as Godfather as I get people.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:30Robin Rauzi?

  Well, I have no children, but I'm sold. School meals.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Let's feed kids.

• 46:36Robin Rauzi?

  Let's feed kids. All right. Executive orders.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  This is where we get to the real part of the show.

• 46:43Robin Rauzi?

  Hey, I just wanted to say, by the way, I was looking at the votes on our executive orders, just to kind of see how things are going. The, like, the most votes overall has gone to your executive order for corporate disclosures of job turnover rates.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yes. Wow, they picked a real one. God.

• 47:03Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah, but also with fewer votes overall, but coming in unanimous at this point, is the children's trust fund from the estate tax. Also, more rest stops on the 101 and bathrooms at playgrounds. This is a pro bathroom, optimist community.

• 47:19Speaker 02

  This is a big government bathroom community.

• 47:22Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah. Well, people like, people also like billboards pointing out labor violations.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 47:27Robin Rauzi?

  I think these are your friends you get on there.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  I didn't juice this at all.

• 47:32Robin Rauzi?

  You didn't go through and vote on it.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  This is so exciting. Okay, so now, no pressure for this executive order.

• 47:38Robin Rauzi?

  Executive order.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Executive order. Why don't you go first?

• 47:41Robin Rauzi?

  My executive order this week, we got from listener Pamela Gordon. Pamela says that work performed as a parent or stay-at-home parent should be listed on resumes and recognized in the same manner as traditional jobs. And she gave this example, used applied mathematics degree to successfully organize a carpool of three families and five children without any fighting or tears. She gave other examples, but that was the best.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Getting a kid into a car without tears? What did you do?

• 48:11Robin Rauzi?

  Anyway, I'm endorsing that one this week.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Man, I love that. My executive order is that Congress has to put statehood for DC up for a vote. And if you vote against it, your state loses 700,000 people in House representation.

• 48:27Robin Rauzi?

  So, wait, wait, wait. Like, they need to put it up for, like, a constitutional amendment, and so all the states would have to vote? What are you saying?

• 48:33Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I just mean that, like, I mean, Congress could make DC a state right now. It's not a constitutional, you don't have to amend the Constitution.

• 48:39Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, okay.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  The Constitution says that there needs to be a federal zone, and right now, that federal zone encroaches on 3/4 of a million people who don't have a vote in Congress. If DC were a state, the federal zone would just be downsized to the federal buildings and installations, and offices, and the mall, and would let all the people who live in DC become their own state and have a member of Congress that votes for them, which... Given what has been happening in DC, they are in sore need of. So I think that if you don't think DC should be a state and you're from, you know, Louisiana.

• 49:16Robin Rauzi?

  Wyoming.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Well, Wyoming would lose statehood because I think DC has more people than I want to say Wyoming and maybe Rhode Island.

• 49:25Robin Rauzi?

  Okay, smallest states by population, Delaware, 970, Wyoming, 580.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  So Wyoming, Vermont are smaller than DC. Alaska, it's like neck and neck. So you lose representation in Congress because if those 700,000 people don't matter in DC, they shouldn't matter in your state. So you just can hand them over. So if like 10 representatives from California decided to vote against this, like California would lose those people.

• 49:53Robin Rauzi?

  Would lose 10 times, 750,000, or just we would just lose it once for a state?

• 50:00Speaker 02

  No, I think 10 times and want this to bind. I haven't thought it through fully, but I just, come on.

• 50:07Robin Rauzi?

  I think California is going to come out better than Texas on this whole front.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  But I think there should be some type of consequence that if you truly.

• 50:17Robin Rauzi?

  Believe in disenfranchising 750,000 fellow Americans.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, put your money where your mouth is. We put our mouth where our money is, but we're putting your money where your mouth is. If you don't think 700,000 people in the District of Columbia matter, that's fine. You have 700,000 people that don't get to matter anymore either. And you would keep losing people and keep disenfranchising people in your own state until you voted for DC statehood.

• 50:37Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  And I have to do a special shout out that there is only one DC area sports team that has said anything about the fact that the National Guard is walking through their city and pulling people off of mopeds who are delivering for DoorDash and Instacart to check and see if they're undocumented. And that would be the Washington Spirit. And also shout out to the fans who in the 51st minute of the game chanted out, "Free DC."

• 51:03Robin Rauzi?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  There's a reason why I love women's sports more.

• 51:07Robin Rauzi?

  We do.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  So that is my executive order. Every vote against DC statehood is a loss of 700,000 people of representation in your state. We had such a fun episode and now I'm ending with DC statehood. I almost want to change the executive order and put this on like a more depressing episode.

• 51:26Robin Rauzi?

  That's all right. That's why we have spiritual sponsors.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Spiritual sponsors. Who, what is your spiritual sponsor?

• 51:31Robin Rauzi?

  So my spiritual sponsor this week is steam rooms, like in the gym. So I had never had a gym with a steam room until I joined the downtown YMCA here in Los Angeles. I'm now belong to a slightly bougier gym, but it also has a steam room. And man, when it is so hot and the steam is so thick that you can't even see anybody else in there. It's just as like, it's, it's the purge that you just need sometimes. So.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I love it. Keeping on slightly soccer theme, my spiritual sponsor this week is stoppage time goals. If you are a soccer fan, there is nothing like the reward of a stoppage time goal of like, God, five more minutes. Is this going to happen? And then like in the final closing seconds, there was a stoppage time goal. I have to shout out that the Houston Dash has scored three stoppage time goals in their last three games. All of them were incredible. Yes. Incredible comebacks, but the real crowning achievement has to go to Alyssa Nair, legend goalkeeper, who in the last like 10 seconds passed stoppage time.

• 52:38Robin Rauzi?

  You're waiting for the whistle.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  I mean, they said there was seven minutes of stoppage time. It was the eighth minute. There's a corner kick. Her defender reported she just saw a blur of green go past and head for the goal. And she scored. She was a goalkeeper that came up for a corner kick and actually scored. It was her 200th game in the National Women's Soccer League, her first goal, and she scored in the 98th minute of stoppage time.

• 53:03Robin Rauzi?

  What?

• 53:04Speaker 02

  It's amazing.

• 53:05Robin Rauzi?

  I've got to look this up.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  It's so, I mean, it's so incredible. Her defender, Sam Staub, was like, I just saw her go by. Like they got a corner kick and she just ran all the way to the goal. She didn't, no one told her to go. And she's standing right by the goalie. The ball is like, it's a total mess. The ball's like ping ponging around and she just gets a foot on it and taps it in. And then she turns around and she's like.

• 53:27Robin Rauzi?

  Like, oh my God, oh my God, did you see that?

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yes, in the history of the NWSL, only three goalkeepers have ever scored and she just became the third. And so I just, I've watched it. It's such a disaster of a goal. It's not like it's a Galazo. She's not like shooting from the halfway line and it soars in. I mean, it's an absolute, I can't even keep my eye on the ball. Half the time I'm like, well, where is it now? And then it just, it's just like the tap, her arms go up. And I'm like, this is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. And I don't even understand what I just saw, except for that Alyssa Nair scored a goal in stoppage time.

• 53:59Robin Rauzi?

  Excellent. That's amazing.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  That's my spiritual sponsor.

• 54:03Robin Rauzi?

  That's true, yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so now we should snap.

• 54:09Robin Rauzi?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:12Robin Rauzi?

  Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Andy.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Andy. Had a lot of, I also just want to shout out that they often give us production notes in the chat if there's anything we need to be aware of. But we can tell it's a good episode when they're commenting on what we say.

• 54:24Robin Rauzi?

  If they're actually listening. They haven't fallen asleep.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  They haven't fallen, and they didn't just like hit record, go off camera and be like, they'll never know.