Argentina President Javier Milei (Photo by Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images)
Media outlets and progressive organizations in North Carolina, one of the few states where the legislature was still in session in late June, are touting a new summer school lunch program funded by federal tax dollars that is now accessible to as many as one million recipients statewide. The June 24 episode of Due South, broadcast by NPR member station WUNC, featured a segment on this expansion of federal benefits, which the host said will provide “free and reduced price lunch” to nearly one million North Carolinians for the next few months. Critics, however, contend it’s inaccurate to call it a “free lunch” program.
If WUNC and other media outlets want to be more accurate and to avoid accusation of misleading people, journalists would do well to consider adopting a reform recently put forth by Argentina President Javier Milei, which prohibits government officials and agencies from advertising or promoting any federal, state, and local government program as “free.”
"In the advertising of benefits or services of any kind at the national, provincial, municipal and Autonomous City of Buenos Aires levels that are of free access or attention by citizens, the word 'free' or similar may not be used, and it must be made clear that it is a free access benefit or service financed by taxpayers' taxes," states Article 209 of the omnibus bill proposed by President Milei in December, shortly after he was elected to office. That omnibus package entails a number of fiscal, regulatory, electoral, and energy policy reforms.
If the summer lunch program is as great as proponents say, they shouldn’t feel the need to use misleading or inaccurate language to describe it. That’s why, moving forward, WUNC and other media outlets would do well to refer to such programs not as “free or reduce price lunch programs,” but rather as taxpayer-funded lunch programs. Doing so would not only correct an inaccuracy, it would reduce story word count in the process, something that editors of all political and ideological stripes can appreciate.
The new summer lunch program that is now available to North Carolinians provides $40 per month per child. These days, that will cover the cost of a weekly 12 pack of Coke, Pepsi, or RC Cola. The temporary boost in public assistance is paid as a lump sum. Recipients of Medicaid, which was recently expanded in North Carolina, are automatically enrolled.
Progressive organizations, pundits, and politicians are touting this new summer lunch program. Yet, at the same time progressives urges conservatives to support increased federal assistance, Democrats continue to attack red states with elevated levels of federal assistance. Republican-led states where more federal tax dollars are spent in the state than are paid to the IRS are often lambasted by Democrats as “taker states.” “Donor states” is the term given to states that pay more in federal taxes than they receive in transfer payments from Uncle Sam. Progressives continue to indicate the “donor state/taker state” metric is important to them.
“New York State remains the largest donor state in the nation for the 5th consecutive year,” the Rockefeller Institute noted in their 2021 report on the topic. During one of his 2020 press conferences that won him rave reviews from late night television hosts and even an Emmy, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) attacked the so-called “taker states.”
“Who are the taker states?,” Cuomo asked rhetorically during that April 2020 press conference, answering it’s “the Southeast part of the country.”
At the same time left-of-center politicians and pundits tout the “donor state” status of many blue states and attack red states as “taker states,” they advocate for policies that will cause “taker states” to accept even more federal tax dollars, further entrenching their “taker state” status. Democratic politicians, pundits, and activists who like to criticize red states as “taker states” might consider the fact that the more a state follows progressive policy prescriptions, the more likely it is to be a “taker state.”
Attempting to get politicians to avoid misleading metrics or inaccurate statements is a futile effort. People can and should, however, demand more from their media. While state lawmakers cannot prevent media outlets from inaccurately referencing “free” public assistance programs, however, they can require it on the part of state agencies. If President Milei’s reform were to be adopted by North Carolina lawmakers, for example, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services would have to advertise the aforementioned summer lunch program, not as one that provides “free or reduced price meals,” as it currently does, but instead one that offers “taxpayer-funded or subsidized meals.”
Milei’s proposal to rectify inaccurate descriptions or promotions of public programs, as the recent example from North Carolina demonstrates, would also be helpful in the U.S. Furthermore, if Milei’s reform were adopted voluntarily by statehouse press corps in Raleigh, Albany, Springfield, Richmond, Nashville, and elsewhere, as well as by the journalists covering national affairs from Washington and New York, the result would be more accurate reporting for the public, which is something that people of all political and ideological stripes can get behind.
