School Food Programs: State Governments Better Positioned to Fund and Run

Pointing to “breathtaking failures,” President Trump is moving to shut down the federal Department of Education. Congress will need to make any cuts permanent, but downsizing the federal education bureaucracy is a long-overdue reform.

The department, however, is not the only way that the federal government intervenes in the nation’s schools. The government also spends $35 billion a year on school food programs through the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The school lunch program was enacted in 1946, and it morphed into an array of breakfast, lunch, after-school, and summer food programs that now cover 30 million children.

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Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards holds the Kilts Family Chair in Fiscal Studies at the Cato Institute.

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Pointing to “breathtaking failures,” President Trump is moving to shut down the federal Department of Education. Congress will need to make any cuts permanent, but downsizing the federal education bureaucracy is a long-overdue reform.

The department, however, is not the only way that the federal government intervenes in the nation’s schools. The government also spends $35 billion a year on school food programs through the Department of Agriculture (USDA). The school lunch program was enacted in 1946, and it morphed into an array of breakfast, lunch, after-school, and summer food programs that now cover 30 million children.