My mother -- a doctor of medicine who had 11 children -- made my brothers and sisters the lunches we carried each day to school in brown paper bags. The standard menu was a sandwich and some kind of fruit -- an apple, an orange, a banana or, maybe, a peach or a pear.

There were 72 students enrolled in my grade level at St. Raphael's School in San Rafael, California. We were divided into two classes of 36 -- and every student in both those classes brought their own lunch to school each day.

We stored them in the cloakroom in the morning and retrieved them at lunchtime. Then after lunch we headed outside for recess -- where the boys in my class often played whiffle ball.

No government -- federal, state or local -- paid a penny for the lunches those students ate at that parochial school.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who calls himself a "democratic socialist," and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) are now promoting a much different vision of America than one in which parents prepare -- and pay for -- their own children's lunches.

They want the government to pay for and provide not just lunch but also breakfast and dinner to every public school student in this country -- and not just during the school year but year-round.

Sanders and Omar last month reintroduced their Universal School Meals Program Act, which they first introduced in 2019. Nineteen senators and 85 members of the House of Representatives joined........

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