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LETTER: Steve King proposes 'perverse, chaotic and toxic' bill

Sioux City Journal - 4/16/2018

For voters who have no problem with Rep. Steve King's explosive pronouncements on immigration, diversity, and reproductive rights, there is yet another position on which he must be evaluated.

We all know that Mr. King believes in the unifying force of the white race, Christianity and the English language. However, he has no such faith in a 197-year-old American institution - public education. This is demonstrated by a bill he introduced last year, H.R. 610. It proposes the use of public funds for private vouchers, thus siphoning already paltry funds from public schools whose students (many of them white) demonstrate the highest need and sharing them with institutions which benefit a cherry-picked few. He sees no need for schools to prepare students for taking their place in a shared commonality. How can the resulting socially tiered hodge-podge be unifying?

But even more troubling is the proposal in the same bill to scrap the nutrition requirements for school meals. No fruit, vegetable or whole grain requirements, no limit on sodium, sugar or fats - a fast food purveyor's dream in a nation already beset by childhood obesity and diabetes.

The bill's minimal chance of passing nevertheless reveals its sponsor's brutishness. Why would a man sworn to protect the public good sponsor such perverse, chaotic and toxic legislation? His is not a maverick leaning; it's a mutinous one. Please vote in the June 5 primary, after researching the other choices: Cyndi Hanson (R) or Leann Jacobsen, Dr. John Paschen or J.D. Scholten (Dems). - Karen Heidman, Sioux City