Sponsors
The bill expands universal free school meals and cancels meal debt to reduce child hunger, stigma, and administrative burden, but does so at increased federal cost and with potential implementation and budgetary strains for schools and government agencies.
All students at participating schools will receive free lunches without individual applications, increasing meal access and reducing hunger and stigma for enrolled children.
Schools are barred from collecting unpaid meal charges and students will not be denied meals or face stigmatizing debt collection at school.
Schools will receive predictable federal reimbursements — a guaranteed national average payment per free lunch indexed annually to the food-away-from-home CPI — and will be reimbursed for existing unpaid meal debt, improving financial stability for school meal programs.
All taxpayers may bear substantially higher federal costs to fund universal free lunches and to reimburse existing meal debt, increasing federal spending.
Some families who previously paid reduced-price or full-price will receive free meals, shifting costs away from families toward the federal budget and raising concerns about reduced cost-sharing or targeting.
Schools lose a tool (ability to collect unpaid charges) that encouraged payment of current meal balances, which could lead to higher unpaid balances in the future absent alternative policies.
Based on analysis of 6 sections of legislative text.
Makes all students in participating schools eligible for free lunches, sets/indices a national free-lunch payment, bans collecting unpaid lunch debt, and reimburses prior meal debt.
Introduced February 12, 2026 by S. Raja Krishnamoorthi · Last progress February 12, 2026
Makes all students in schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program eligible for free lunches, sets a national average federal payment rate for free lunches with annual CPI-based adjustments, eliminates the reduced-price category, bans schools from using unpaid meal debt as a condition of program participation, and creates a USDA reimbursement program to pay off preexisting school meal delinquent debt with GAO review and reporting requirements. The Act sets implementation timelines for USDA to collect data and complete reimbursements and authorizes funding as needed to carry out the reimbursement program.