Signers of a letter to the President include Sen. Gale McGee, D-Wyo., chairman of the Senate Agriculture appropriations subcommittee, and Democratic whip Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Ten of the signers are Republicans. The letter said that under the proposed new regulations, announced by the Agriculture Department just 3 weeks before most schools began to open, states will be denied millions of federal dollars that would have helped school districts pay for lunches under the old regulations. As examples, the letter said, Missouri will lose $4 million, California $9 million, Massachusetts $3.24 million, Ohio $5.56 million, Georgia $4.1 million, West Virginia $2.66 million, and Florida $6.91 million. "The states cannot make up this loss from state or local funds and will have no alternative but to reduce planned participation to stay within the limitations of available funds," the letter said. "Therefore, many needy and eligible children will go without school lunches," it said. "Certainly this was not the intent of Congress when it passed (the school lunch law), nor your intent when signing it into law on May 14, 1970." Aids to Sens. Philip Hart, D-Mich.; George McGovern, D-S.D., and Marlow Cook, R-Ky., circulated the letter after attending a Senate hearing last week where several state school-lunch directors testified the new regulations would reduce the scope of the program-not increase it as the Agriculture Department claimed. Agriculture Department officials said at the time they announced the new regulations Aug. 4 that "we must have discipline if we're going to live within our budgets." Three days later, 33 state school-lunch directors signed a protest accusing USDA of bringing school-lunch programs to "a screeching halt" by cutting the amount of money available to help the school district pay for each lunch served. McGovern asked Agriculture Secretary Clifford Hardin to withdraw the new rules, but a spokesman for McGovern's Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs said there is no indication the department will. The 44 senators asked President Nixon to keep the old regulations in effect. "In this way we could be certain that the funds Congress made available .. would be fully utilized," their letter said. [The Washington Evening Star, Sept. 28, 1971] SHOWDOWN ON SCHOOL LUNCHES SET By James Welsh The Senate Agriculture Committee, in a showdown set for tomorrow, appears ready to demand that the Nixon administration put up at least $100 million more than it wants to for school lunch programs for the needy. By so doing, the committee might well wreck an enduring Washington cliche. For any conservative purpose, so the cliche holds, the congressional agriculture committees and the executive Agriculture Department always march hand in hand. But this time around, with Chairman Herman E. Talmadge, D-Ga., in the lead. the Senate committee is not only taking on the Agriculture Department. It is ady, in an unusual move, to approve a joint Senate-House resolution that would write school lunch regulations that Agriculture refuses to set and to impose subsidy levels the President's budget-makers refuse to approve. NEW IN POST Talmadge, who this year replaced Sen. Allen Ellender, D-La., as committee chairman, ordered the resolution prepared last week. It directs the Agriculture Department to subsidize local school districts by 45 cents per lunch for every needy child, rather than the 35-cent limit imposed by the department in stringent regulations announced Aug. 13. And it says the department "shall spend" whatever it has to of the $100 million extra school-lunch appropriation approved by Congress for this fiscal year but since impounded by the administration. The committee will meet in executive session tomorrow. Talmadge is expected to carry all of the committee's eight Democrats with him, including six Southerners. One of the two Northern Democratic members, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, a liberal closely identified with the hunger issue, expects to be absent tomorrow but has given Talmadge his proxy. Rep. Carl D. Perkins, D-Ky., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has introduced a resolution identical to the one the Senate committee is expected to approve tomorrow. The legislation, to be effective, must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Nixon. REBUFFED BY OMB The administration could avert a showdown by relenting on its stand. But the Agriculture Department was reported today to have been rebuffed by the Office of Management and Budget and ready to announce that its Aug. 13 regulations will be made final. OMB officials are determined to keep a lid on last fiscal year's federal spending of $615 million for school lunches. More than half this amount was for the needy. To many state and local school districts, the federal government's posture on school lunches has been a constantly shifting one. In 1970, Congress passed the School Lunch Reform Act, sponsored in part by Talmadge. President Nixon, in signing it, called for "an end to hunger in the nation's school rooms." Last spring, the Agriculture Department relaxed its spending regulations, permitting the federal payment per lunch to rise well above its previous 33-cent maximum. From March to May, as a result, the number of children in the program rose from 6.3 million to 7.1 million. 42 CENTS EXPECTED For this school year, local districts confidently expected a federal subsidy averaging 42 cents per lunch for more than 7 million children. The Aug. 13 pronouncement, lowering that to 35 cents, proved a shocker. It came three weeks before the opening of school and well after most local school boards had set budgets. In the wake of the announcement, a number of school districts are reported to be abandoning the school lunch program or considering such a move. They include Albuquerque, N.M., Bridgeport, Conn., and Buffalo, N.Y. Josephine Martin, the State of Georgia's food services director, said today her state stands to lose $6 million if the new regulations become final. "For our school districts, the only alternatives will be to cut participation or the quality of the lunches," she said. Miss Martin has worked closely with Talmadge on the problem. POPULAR ISSUE "Talmadge," said one Capitol Hill observer, "is really taking the lead on us. He's convinced the school lunch program is very popular in Georgia. Sen. Ellender is friendly to the program to, but he would not have challenged the Agriculture Department the way Talmadge has done. The committee's stand has really shook up the people at Agriculture." McGovern was the first to protest the New Agriculture Department regulations. But it was a little-noticed Agriculture Committee hearing on Sept. 16 that set the stage for the current showdown. At that hearing, Talmadge and fellow Southerners, including Sens. Ellender; B. Everett Jordan, D-N.C.; James B. Allen, D-Ala.; and Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., ripped into Asst. Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng, telling him he hadn't proven his case. Hon. GEORGE MCGOVERN, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, September 29, 1971. DEAR SENATOR: Thank you for your recent letter commenting on the proposed National School Lunch Program regulations. The Department of Agriculture is now in the process of reviewing and evaluating all of the suggestions and comments received before finalizing and publishing the regulations. We believe that much of the criticism of the proposed regulations has stemmed from a lack of understanding of how the proposed reimbursement structure will work. Rather than causing a fiscal crisis in school districts, we believe that the proposed regulations present a breakthrough in program funding. Under the proposed regulations mid-year funding uncertainties can be avoided. In addition, for the first time in the history of the National School Lunch Program, a State needing to expand its program can do so without fear that such expansion will be at the expense of an unwarranted reduction in levels of assistance to already participating schools. The proposed regulations do not reduce the maximum rates of assistance that were in effect last school year. The maximum rates authorized for section 4 and section 11 are, of course, considerably higher than the rates actually paid on an average basis. The higher maximum permits the States, if they so elect, to vary rates around the average in order to provide above-average rates to the poorest schools and less-than-average rates to the affluent schools. The maximum rates of assistance authorized in the proposed regulations remain essentially unchanged from the 1970-1971 rates. A State is still authorized to pay its neediest schools up to 60 cents for a free or reduced price lunch. A maximum rate of 50 cents is authorized if the school is serving a significant number of reduced price lunches because it would be receiving revenues from the reduced payments. The proposed amendments are concerned with the distribution of available funds among the States. They deal with the average reimbursement to be paid on a statewide basis, not the maximum rates. A year's operating experience under Public Law 91-248 led the Department to the conclusion that it would be in the best interest of all of the States if a method of distributing available funds could be found that would better distribute the available funds among the States in accordance with expected participation at the beginning of the school year. It was also concluded that it was necessary to go beyond funding at national average reimbursement rates to guarantee each State that no matter how much it expanded its program, it could maintain a statewide average rate of 5 cents under section 4 and a statewide average rate of 30 cents under section 11. This is the essence of the proposed regulations. The Department's proposals are not designed to save funds. We expect to spend all the funds authorized in the 1972 appropriation act. Careful consideration is being given to the use of the additional Section 32 funds authorized to fund child nutrition needs not met by regular appropriations. The Department's consideration will be based on overall demand and the funds available. The proposed regulations were published in the Federal Register on August 13. This was three days after the Agricultural Appropriations Bill passed by Congress on July 22 was signed into law. The comment period was limited to 15 days in order to expedite the publication of the final regulations. In view of the fact that school was due to start at the beginning of September, it was felt that any benefits to be gained by extending the comment period would be offset by the problems the States would encounter in implementing new reimbursement rates after the start of the school year. Your interest in commenting on these proposals is appreciated. EUGENE S. COWEN, [The New York Times, Oct. 2, 1971] SENATE ACTS TO FORCE RISE IN AID FOR SCHOOL LUNCHES By Marjorie Hunter WASHINGTON, Oct. 1-The Senate voted today to direct the Nixon Administration to borrow sufficient funds to feed the nation's needy school children. The rare move was a sharp rebuff to the Administration, which just six weeks |