A Chance to Feast on Reagan

The President called it at one point possible "bureaucratic sabotage." Chief Budget Cutter David Stockman conceded that Administration officials were left "with egg on their face." Both men were referring to proposed new regulations, announced by the Agriculture Department, for school lunch programs that would have classified catsup as a vegetable. The resulting furor forced the Administration into a hasty and embarrassing announcement that the rules were being recalled for redrafting. Even so, they remain in many minds a symbol of what critics see as the Reagan team's callous indifference to the poor.

The foul-up had its beginnings in mid-August. In the Budget Reconciliation Act, Congress charged the USDA with proposing changes in the school lunch regulations that would have reduced the cost of producing meals and partially offset the cuts in federal subsidies. A USDA task force had already been set up to address the question of "meal patterns," bureaucratese for guidelines that determine the permissible size and nutritional quality of lunches. In three weeks, the new USDA meal proposals were rushed through the agency, hastily given the green light by Stockman's Office of Management and Budget, and made public on the eve of the long Labor Day weekend. In essence, the new regulations would have saved local school authorities $300 million by instituting several key changes. Among them: offering only three main types of lunches (preschool, elementary and secondary) instead of five; reducing the minimum allowable size of a meal; lowering the minimum nutritional requirement; and allowing certain alternatives to meat and vegetables. Although catsup was not mentioned by name, the regulations did state that a catsup-like concentrate would qualify as a vegetable--so long as it was served with a healthy portion of another real vegetable, a point that got lost in the general handwringing.

The new regulations were closely scrutinized at the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based public interest law firm and consumer watchdog that got much of its money from the first federal agency abolished by Reagan, the Community Services Administration. Workers at FRAC wasted no time preparing the first meal to the new specifications. The paltry elementary school menu: 1 1/2 oz. of hamburger (instead of 2 oz.), one slice of white bread (rather than 1 1/2), six French fries, nine grapes, and a 6-oz. (not 8-oz.) glass of milk. The story was picked up by TV news and papers across the country. The New York Times's front-page headline: U.S. ACTS TO SHRINK SCHOOL LUNCH SIZE IN ECONOMY MOVE. The merits of the controversy got covered with catsup. Scoffed Pennsylvania Republican Senator John Heinz, a scion of the catsup-making family: "This is one of the most ridiculous regulations I ever heard of." The final straw came when Senate Democrats, including Minority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia, South Carolina's Ernest Hollings and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, were photographed staring with distaste at a skimpy sample school lunch. Said FRAC Head Nancy Amidei: "We didn't have to do anything--they handed us the issue on a platter."

The Administration was slow in assessing the political damage. A worried White House senior staff called in Agriculture Secretary John Block for consultations about whether or not to redraft the proposals. Apparently as a result, the subject was not broached in the President's Sept. 24 budget address. The following day Stockman blasted the proposed regulations as "a bureaucratic goof and Block formally announced they would be pulled back for further study. Added Stockman tactlessly: "I don't think the little catsup episode is going to have any great significance."

In retrospect, chastened USDA officials feel that they should have sold their proposals more carefully within the Administration before going public. Says Mary Jarratt, USDA Assistant Secretary for Food and Consumer Services: "There was no way for the regulations not to be controversial. We are talking about a sensitive group, little children." With nearly one-third of the school lunch budget already slashed by Congress, those officials will have ample opportunity to devise a more appropriate, nutritional and workable plan.

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