Food Bank veto a vote for limited government

Dean Lerner's June 8 guest column (“Food Bank veto says a lot about Branstad”) begins with a pregnant query: “When, exactly, did we lose our way?” It expands into his apparent philosophy of taxation, “a shared responsibility” to, among other things, “take care of the neediest among us.” Lerner then laments the governor's veto of $500,000 appropriated to the Food Bank of Iowa.

In a more sensible reckoning of “losing our way,” we should ask: When did we abandon the view of taxes as modest revenue collected to finance reasonable protective functions of limited government and leap to the progressive theory of government as a vast social enterprise, funded by a presumably inexhaustible taxpayer base?

Lerner's piece is another serving of the whiny redistributionist complaint of the “rich getting richer/poor getting poorer,” often with the insinuation that poverty somehow the fault of the “profits-wallowing rich.” And it's government's responsibility to even the score.

I applaud the governor's action to help us find our way back. Further, I would rather see efforts instead devoted to promoting the economic vitality of the state, thereby benefiting the poor (and everyone else) with better job prospects.

Food Bank support is better left to private funding.

Dale Fitzgibbons

Cedar Rapids