“To get a waiver each district has to apply to the state,” she notes. “The state has to decide whether to accept it. If they agree, then they have to apply to the U.S.D.A. If the U.S.D.A. says yes, the state can get the waiver, the district can get the waiver, but then the state has to interpret how you do it.”

Example: Oregon applied to the U.S.D.A. for an area-eligibility waiver so it could provide food for needy families living in non-poor areas. The department allowed the waiver, with the requirement, Wilson says, that each school district would have to work with a state agency “to develop a plan as to how they are going to target the most-needy students.”

But as the economy collapses, the need keeps growing, and nobody can be sure who the “most-needy” students will be. Desperate school districts have their right arm chained to bureaucratic dead weight — and their left to a horseman of the apocalypse.

It’s not just U.S.D.A. From 2007 to 2019, the total number of employees in the Food and Drug Administration increased by nearly 80 percent to more than 17,000 employees, according to a Cato Institute report. That includes nearly 500 additional workers to review the safety of medical devices.

Has it helped? In March, Julia Ioffe wrote a must-read account in GQ of the F.D.A.’s almost-comical mishandling of an effort to roll out coronavirus test kits. First the F.D.A. approved a flawed test. Then they stymied an effective test by requiring its developer to submit his request not only electronically but also mailed in paper and via thumb drive. Then the F.D.A. demanded that the developer see if his test worked against other coronaviruses. Then the F.D.A. shut down a testing regime developed by the Seattle Flu Study because it lacked the correct licensing requirements.