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• Re-evaluate excessive regulation. As for baby formula regulations generally, labeling regulations and regulations that unnecessarily delay the manufacture and sale of baby formula should be re-evaluated.*° During the Biden Administration, there have been devastating baby formula shortages.

Return to the Original Purpose of School Meals. Federal meal programs for K-12 students were created to provide food to children from low-income families while at school.*' Today, however, federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs that have strayed far from their original objective and represent an example of the ever-expanding federal footprint in local school operations.

The NSLP and SBP are the two largest K-12 meal programs provided by federal taxpayer money. The NSLP launched in 1946 and the SBP in 1966, both as options specifically for children in poverty.®? During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal policymakers temporarily expanded access to school meal programs, but some lawmakers and federal officials have now proposed making this expansion permanent. Yet even before the pandemic, research found that federal officials had already expanded these programs to serve children from upper-income homes, and these programs are rife with improper payments and inefficiencies.

Heritage Foundation research from 2019 found that after the enactment of the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) in 2010, the share of students from middle- and upper-income homes receiving free meals in states that participated in CEP doubled, and in some cases tripled—all in a program meant for children from families with incomes at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty line (Children from homes at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for free lunches, while students from families at or below 185 percent of poverty are eligible for reduced-priced lunches).**

Under CEP, if 40 percent of students in a school or school district are eligible for federal meals, all students in that school or district can receive free meals. However, the USDA has taken it even further, improperly interpreting the law® to allow a subset of schools within a district to be grouped together to reach the 40 percent threshold, As a result, a school with zero low-income students could be grouped together with schools with high levels of low-income students, and as a result all the students in the schools within that group (even schools without a single low-income student) can receive free federal meals.*° Schools can direct resources meant for students in poverty to children from wealthier families.

Furthermore, the NSLP and SBP are among the most inaccurate federal programs according to PaymentAccuracy.gov, a project of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and the Office of the Inspector General.®*’ Before federal auditors reduced the rigor of annual reporting requirements in 2018, the NSLP had wasted nearly $2 billion in taxpayer resources through payments provided to ineligible recipients.** Even after the auditing changes, which the U.S. Government