AMAC Exclusive – By Sam Adolphsen
For most Americans, the old adage that “there is no such thing as a free lunch” represents enduring wisdom and ask-your-grandpa common sense. Rational minds know that something might look “free,” but the bill always comes due eventually.
There’s no doubt that Joe Biden has heard the saying. He probably remembers when it first went viral. But he seems to have lost the wisdom of that phrase somewhere along the way – along with the rest of his marbles. Now, his administration is advertising a literal “free lunch” for tens of millions of Americans that they will ultimately end up paying for, whether through higher taxes, higher inflation, or both.
Specifically, bureaucrats in Biden’s department of Food and Nutrition Services (FNS), just pushed through a rule creating a new loophole in the “free school lunch” program that will give millions a free lunch year-round. The gimmick will include millions of families being issued new welfare cards to buy food all summer long.
Surely, you might say, this is only helping the truly needy, though, right? Wrong. The new welfare program will include millions who have the means to purchase their own food, some of them with incomes well above the national average.
But remember what Grandpa said about free lunches. Someone pays. So, who is buying all these free lunches?
You.
Once again taxpayers will foot the bill as Biden the Benevolent, the Food Stamp President, hands out more of your (borrowed) money in the form of a plastic card to be swiped at Costco, Wal-Mart, or a gas station near you.
Biden has dramatically increased food stamp enrollment and spending overall. In 2019, President Trump had trimmed the fat on the welfare program down from a record high and still cost taxpayers “just” $60 billion.
By 2022, Biden and Congress had ballooned those costs to $119 billion.
Notably, the same bureaucrats in D.C. who pushed through this latest welfare giveaway also gave a nearly 30 percent raise to food stamp recipients last year, all while the work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents was suspended. This unilateral raise for welfare recipients was done without congressional approval and was illegal.
The latest giveaway gambit was accomplished in two parts. First, the administration worked with Congress to push forward a summer food stamp program that was piloted during COVID-19.
Like seemingly every “temporary” government program, especially those cooked up during the pandemic, this one will now be made permanent. States have the option to provide a food stamp benefit to school kids all summer long.
Think summer school, with just the lunch part of school, and none of the learning.
The free school lunch program was originally geared towards providing low-income school kids with a free lunch. But various bureaucrat maneuvers and expansions over the years have grown the school lunch program to include millions with higher incomes.
Specifically, something called the “community eligibility provision” or CEP, means that if a certain number of kids in a school qualify for free lunch based on their lower incomes, then all other kids in the school also qualify, despite higher incomes that would normally make them ineligible.
That is where the second part of the latest scheme comes into play.
The new rule pushed through by Biden bureaucrats lowers the threshold of the community eligibility provision from 40 percent to 25 percent. This means that a school now only needs to have one quarter of their students who are eligible for free school lunch based on certain criteria, and then the entire school becomes eligible.
It doesn’t matter whether the kid is from a middle-class family or a rich family, they are going to get “free” lunch by virtue of being in a school where a minority of other students are eligible.
Free lunch for all, coming soon to a cul-de-sac near you.
So how much do all these free lunches for middle-class and rich kids cost?
Billions. Maybe tens of billions.
The good news is that states can lead and slow the spread of government dependency. They do not have to implement this program and they shouldn’t. Only about a dozen states have so far, including the usual suspects like California.
States can and should focus on providing benefits for the truly needy kids from poor families – and on empowering as many families as possible to advance beyond financial dependency.
If we don’t reverse course as a nation soon, we will all qualify for a free lunch. And then who pays?
Sam Adolphsen is the policy director at the Foundation for Government Accountability, and the former Chief Operating Officer for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services where he oversaw welfare eligibility and fraud investigations.
