Child Nutrition Programs

GAO examined the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) proposal to cut the budgets of several child nutrition programs by $467.6 million. USDA cannot presently measure whether the programs are meeting legislative objectives and can only partially estimate the impact of budget changes. USDA plans to reduce programs with the least impact on the needy. According to USDA, future program evaluations will assess program impacts on nutrient intake and health and determine the efficiency of current benefit levels for existing needs. Proposed cutbacks in the National School Lunch Program will exclude about 4.2 percent of the beneficiaries, but USDA offers no guess as to what will happen to those disqualified. Farm income will drop 0.1 percent because of school lunch cuts. Proposed cuts to the Summer Food Service Program for Children and the Special Milk Program for Children would drop farm milk prices by an estimated 6 cents per hundredweight, but most of this loss would be nullified by proposed increases elsewhere. All of the revisions have been planned without adequate data on their eventual effect upon recipients and farmers.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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