How should we solve this problem? One option would be to take the already complex system through which children in public schools are fed and layer more complexity on top of it. Set up a few new means-tested programs, create funding streams that school districts can apply for, offer some grants.
Or we could just give every kid lunch.
And breakfast too, for those who want it. Imagine: Children just walking into the cafeteria and getting fed. No accounts that parents have to keep up, no time spent assessing families’ incomes or processing payments or running down parents who haven’t paid — no “lunch shaming” — none of that. Kids just eat.
That’s what Michigan has now done: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has signed an education bill providing free meals for every public school student. Michigan is now the seventh state to offer this benefit, joining California, Colorado, Minnesota, Maine, New Mexico and Vermont.
Those are all blue states, and this is certainly something liberals are inclined to favor, because it involves a kind of nurturing-through-benefits that liberals love. But it also serves to advance a broader goal that liberals ought to pay more attention to: making government simultaneously more ambitious and simpler.
Which is why every Democrat should advocate it, and make Republicans who disagree explain why they don’t think we should just feed all the children so they can concentrate on learning.
At the moment, we have a three-tier system for lunch in public schools. Kids whose family income is below 130 percent of the poverty line (or $39,000 for a family of four) get free meals; those with an income up to 185 percent of poverty (or $55,500) get reduced-price meals, and everyone else pays full price. Families usually have to apply to receive such assistance, which creates a barrier for those who can’t or don’t want to deal with the paperwork. Then, eligibility has to be verified and tracked, and in the cafeteria itself, payments have to be processed. Many school districts have to employ full-time staff just to administer the system.
We had universal free school meals from 2020 to 2022; as part of pandemic relief, Congress provided funds to make all school meals free to any student who wanted them. The Biden administration and many Democrats wanted to extend the program, but Republicans resisted, and it expired.
If you’re a parent, you might remember what happened when schools no longer had to determine eligibility. Not only were many more students eligible for meals, including those who had trouble paying before, but the removal of the layers of bureaucracy just made everything easier. “If you take away that paperwork, it’s such a benefit to families and students. And it also speeds up the lunch line,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner of the School Nutrition Association.
We usually associate critiques of bureaucracy and the complexity of government programs with conservatives, who often argue that government is inherently cumbersome and inefficient. In some cases they’re right — but it’s liberals who have the greatest interest in making government work better. Though some policy areas are unavoidably complicated (health care, for instance), liberals should be on the lookout for places where things can be simplified, because it helps more people and improves the government’s image.
It would be hard to find a better opportunity than universal school meals. Sure, it isn’t cheap, but we’re already spending billions of dollars on feeding kids in school, because we agree that it’s a good thing to do (and the poorest districts are already eligible for universal meals under a program called the Community Eligibility Provision). We just have to decide to feed all children, and do it in the least bureaucratic way possible.
And yes, that means that kids whose parents can afford to buy their meals will get them at no charge. But we aren’t setting up income-assessment and payment systems for having gym class or getting a locker. Every public school student gets those benefits, just as they could get free meals.
There is a universal school meals bill in Congress sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), but it has never gone anywhere. Yet this should not be something only the most progressive Democrats favor.
For now, it’s only happening in those seven states (though universal school meal bills have been introduced in two dozen others). But the federal government already subsidizes school breakfast and lunch in every state, and it can boost that subsidy to give every child free meals. “It is wonderful to see” these states offer universal meals, Pratt-Heavner told me, “but a child’s nutritional needs are the same whether they’re living in Michigan or Mississippi. This is a federal program, and we need a federal solution.”
The next step is for Democrats to start advocating it on a national level. They can frame it as help for struggling families, support for academic achievement, or eliminating needless government bureaucracy. But the message couldn’t be simpler: Just give kids lunch. You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier position to advocate than that.
