RALEIGH — It’s really not the money. It’s the principle of the thing.

I’m talking about the latest push out of Washington to expand the welfare state just a little more. And I’m sad to say that our own freshman Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina is behind the proposal, which would eliminate the cost-sharing requirement for federally funded school lunches for families with incomes more than 30 percent above the poverty line.

Basically, Dole and other supporters of the legislation want more American children to get a free lunch. And heartless folks like me want to take that desperately needed sustenance away from those poor children, consigning them to their pitiful fate: a ravenous hunger that will leave them weak, faint-headed, and more likely to drop out of school and become gang members or prostitutes.

Or maybe, just maybe, critics think that the current rule — which requires non-poor families to cough up 40 cents a day for each child receiving a subsidized lunch — is at least reasonable if not scandalously lenient.

Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. Children get free breakfast and lunch if their family incomes are below 130 percent of the poverty line, or about $23,500 for a family of four. Up to 185 percent of poverty, or $33,500 for the same family, they get the reduced-price lunch. The annual cost for two children in the latter case would run about $150, or about .4 percent of the family’s income. Is it too much to ask these families — who are not poor, by the way, despite the lazy way many “advocates” throw that term around — to devote at least this tiny percentage of their incomes to feeding their children lunch?

Apparently so. Proponents are so convinced that their cause is self-evident that they blame all opposition on what it would cost federal taxpayers — around $600 million a year. “We haven’t had anybody who thinks this is a bad policy,” said Barry Sackin, vice president for public policy at the American School Food Service Association. “The issue comes down to money.”

No, it really doesn’t. We ought to save federal dollars wherever we can, but an extra $600 million expenditure is chump change in the context of our massive federal budget. If the cause were just, the cost would be just fine. The problem here is that giving free food to schoolchildren teaches all the wrong lessons and sets a horrible precedent for future, and in all likelihood much more costly, expansions of the welfare state.

Children need to learn that adults have responsibilities than cannot simply be shifted to others. A basic responsbility of any family is to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to feed the children. Again, we’re not talking about families below the poverty line, situations where the presence of children arguably justifies government assistance or intervention. These aren’t poor families. These are families that likely include at least one full-time worker and probably own cars and other assets.

They should not be turned into welfare recipients by well-meaning but misguided social activists and politicians. They should not be treated as incompetent, impotent victims of society. They should be treated with the dignity and respect due free citizens of a free society. They should be held to this minimum standard: that they can and will spend at least $75 a year on their children’s lunches.

If we cannot draw a line here about the proper size and scope of coercive government, the line cannot be drawn.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.