In 2009, Barack Obama said,
“The American people have to recognize that there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
Unless they qualify.
The USDA handed out free lunches to 18.7 million students in fiscal year 2012.
There were over 49.8 million students attending public elementary and secondary schools in 2012.
That means more than one out of every three students were on the free lunch program last year!
CNS News reported:
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.
In addition to giving away completely free lunches, the National School lunch program also gives away partially subsidized lunches—or what it calls “reduced-price lunches” and “paid lunches.”