When it comes to welfare, the earlier the better is the Dems motto.
Cost to the taxpayers, $10.4 billion.
Via CNS News:
It is an old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but a record 18.7 million American schoolchildren would not have learned that lesson when they attended school in fiscal year 2012.
That is because U.S. taxpayers—via the U.S. Department of Agriculture—were picking up the tab for their lunch.
According to new data from the USDA, during the average school month in fiscal year 2012, 18.7 million students in U.S. high schools and grammar schools were given completely free lunches, courtesy of the department’s National School Lunch Program. That was up from the record of 18.4 million that was set in fiscal 2011.
Back in 1969, the average monthly number of schoolchildren getting free lunches was only 2.9 million. As recently as 1990, it was only 9.8 million. […]
The total cost to the taxpayers for the school lunch program in 2012 was $10,410,100,000.00.
And that does not count free breakfasts.
The federal government’s “School Breakfast Program” also had record participation in fiscal 2012, with 9.76 million students getting free breakfasts during the average school month. That was up from 9.20 in fiscal 2011.