Fails to extend

Finger-pointing ensues after Congress fails to extend universal school meals

Democrats and a long list of school groups are blaming the Senate minority leader for taking a hardline stance against extending the waivers.

By HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH and JESSICA CALEFATI

Universal free meals at schools are slated to end this summer, after a provision to extend temporary pandemic programs was not included in a major spending bill introduced on Capitol Hill.

The first Covid-19 aid package, which was signed into law by then-President Donald Trump, gave USDA the authority to waive a slew of regulations, allowing schools for the first time to serve free meals to all students, regardless of income. That authority is now set to expire on June 30.

Schools whose nutrition programs feed millions of kids daily are in a tailspin after expecting an extension for another year. The flexibility allowed an additional 10 million students to eat free meals at school each day.

The sudden shift sparked a fierce political fight Wednesday over who is to blame.

Democrats and a long list of school groups are pointing at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for taking a hardline stance against extending the waivers.

“I’m shocked and devastated,” said Danielle Bock, director of nutrition services for the Greeley-Evans School District 6 in Weld County, Colo. “I’m just very much reeling from the idea, if you’ll forgive me, that one person gets to determine whether or not 30 million hungry kids in this country have access to school meals.”

McConnell has declined to comment on the issue, but a GOP leadership aide defended ending USDA’s broad pandemic waiver authority as an attempt to clamp down on government spending and get schools back to normal, now that Covid-19 cases are waning and vaccine and treatment access is expanding. The aide noted the Biden administration did not include the ask in its formal budget requests and suggested an extension — which would have cost $11 billion — was never seriously considered in spending bill talks. The aide said blaming Republican leadership was “absurd.”

“President Biden submitted a $22 billion Covid supplemental request for the [omnibus spending bill] with not a mention of USDA or nutrition,” the aide said. “So there was no proposal for anyone to block. These were designed as ‘temporary’ Covid measures.”

The House is expected to vote on the omnibus spending package on Wednesday, with the Senate following later this week. Government funding is currently slated to run out on Friday night.

How we got here: Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, passed in mid-March 2020, the Agriculture Department was first given authority to issue waivers for a slew of regulations. That waiver authority has been extended several times in various spending and aid bills with no controversy. The authority now expires in June. School nutrition program operators have been optimistically assuming that the waivers would get extended one more school year to help them transition back to normal, as supply chains continue to short schools of basic staples like chicken and whole grain bread, and food costs remain high and staffing is so low it’s approaching crisis levels.

While supply chains have recovered in some areas, schools operate on very thin margins and are widely reporting not being able to plan their menus weeks out because of widespread product shortages. School leaders say the additional money and the flexibility with nutrition standards they’ve gotten under the current waivers has helped keep programs running.

The School Nutrition Association, which represents more than 50,000 school food program leaders, has been lobbying for an extension of the waiver authority for months alongside hundreds of other school, nutrition, anti-hunger and food industry groups.

“We all want to put the pandemic behind us, but what school meal programs face is nowhere close to normal,” said Beth Wallace, president of SNA, a group that aligns with both Democrats and Republicans and has sent more than 100,000 emails to Capitol Hill this week to push for an extension of the waivers.

“Congress’ failure to act will undoubtedly cause students to go hungry and leave school meal programs in financial peril,” Wallace said.

What the waivers do: The long list of waivers USDA has granted over the past two years — beginning during the Trump administration — has given schools more money to pay for meals, allowed schools to serve more grab and go meals, and massively cut red tape in a variety of ways. Schools largely haven’t been requiring eligibility applications from families, which means that all kids can get meals without filling out paperwork. Schools have also gotten a break on nutrition standards, since so many are struggling to source foods meeting the typically complex rules.

About 90 percent of schools have been using a waiver to serve universal free meals at school, according to a recent USDA survey.

Finger pointing: There are intense disagreements about how and why the waiver extension was not included in the omnibus bill unveiled early Wednesday morning. Half a dozen sources on both sides of the aisle told POLITICO that the Senate Agriculture Committee was negotiating the details of how to extend the waivers with language that would specify how schools would transition back to normal when the issue got taken out of committee by leadership.

Nutrition and anti-hunger advocates believed McConnell was opposing the waiver extension as a tactic to extract concessions from Democrats on something else in the ongoing omnibus talks over the weekend, but by late Sunday they said it became clear that the minority leader was just a hard “no” on the policy.

On Monday morning, Cindy Long, administrator of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, told a room of several hundred school nutrition leaders, who happen to be in Washington for their annual SNA policy meeting, that the waivers were not in the omnibus bill. There was an audible gasp, sources said.

“I don’t know if anything could have sucked the life or air out of that room in a more significant way than that announcement,” said Bock, of the Greeley-Evans School District 6 in Weld County, Colo.

As it became clear waiver extensions would be out, Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow, part of Senate Democratic leadership, blamed GOP leadership.

“Across America, more than 90 percent of our schools are open and our children are back in the classroom,” Stabenow said, in a statement to POLITICO. “But unfortunately, Republicans in Congress want to let down our children and their parents. Instead of continuing the bipartisan tools and flexibilities to help safely provide meals to students during school and over the summer, which could easily be done in the omnibus, Republican leadership has said NO and decided that they prefer to let our kids go hungry. This is a disgrace!”

A push for normalcy: A GOP leadership aide pushed back strongly on the suggestion that McConnell had anything to do with ending the waivers, repeatedly suggesting that it was the Biden administration that did not properly ask for an extension, which would have needed offsets to pay for it, the aide said.

“Parents and Republicans are for reopening our schools,” the aide said. “Many of these waivers were designed to encourage schools to close and go virtual. This is not a message we should be sending to schools at this point, when almost everyone agrees we should be returning to normal.”

School nutrition leaders note that the waivers are mostly being used to offer free meals to all students and get schools more money per meal to help cover rising food and labor costs. The waivers do not encourage virtual options, but they allow schools to easily serve grab and go meals when students are not on campus, if they want to.

Senate Agriculture Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.), who supported extending the waivers as long as they were crafted in a way that helped transition schools back to normal, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Committee drama: Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the highest-ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said in a statement to POLITICO late Monday she has “serious concerns” about continuing to offer meals to all students given the waning impact of the pandemic. (In the House, school meal programs fall under the Education Committee, in the Senate, they fall under the Agriculture Committee)

“For some time, I have pushed all stakeholders involved to prepare to return to normal operation and respect that taxpayers’ unprecedented support of these programs over the last two years cannot be unlimited,” Foxx said in a statement.

Two Democratic aides told POLITICO that it was Foxx who initially proposed nixing the waivers as the committees worked on omnibus language.

House Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-Va.) disagrees and said changing the rules now will “create chaos” for school leaders and unfairly deprive students of the nutrition they need to learn and grow. Scott said the flexibility allowed an additional 10 million students to eat free meals at school each day.

Senate HELP Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said, “No kid should have to go hungry, it’s really as simple as that.”

“Kids need healthy meals to succeed and live up to their full potential,” she added. “It shouldn’t be controversial to make sure our schools can keep kids fed.”

Advocates for children who oppose ending the waivers say Congress “failed our kids.”

“These waivers are essential for schools and local meal providers, who have stepped up to feed kids since the start of the pandemic,” said Lisa Davis, the senior vice president of advocacy group Share Our Strength. “Schools are under enough pressure. Today, Congress made their jobs even harder.”

The consequences of not extending the waivers will be severe, Davis warned. Schools will have less money to cover the cost of higher-priced food and will face additional financial penalties for not meeting federal nutrition requirements. This new landscape with restricted access to free meals will be especially tough on children in rural communities, she added.

“Today’s news is a worst-case scenario for schools and children nationwide,” Davis said. “We urge Congress to include USDA waiver authority in the omnibus bill before its final passage.”