Child Nutrition

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. I want to thank my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for organizing this today and for his leadership on child nutrition programs. I want to thank all my colleagues for being here. This is an important issue. There is no question about that.

We are here because we are outraged. We are outraged at Republican attempts to undermine our child nutrition programs. We are outraged at their lousy child reauthorization bill. It is a terrible, terrible, terrible bill. My friends should be ashamed of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, a nutritious school meal is just as important to a child's success in school as a textbook. Hungry children can't concentrate. They can't focus on their studies. In short, hungry children cannot learn. That is a fact. Everybody knows that. Yet we have a bill that my Republican friends have drafted that will increase hunger and that will actually take food out of the mouths of children. It is outrageous.

Together, our child nutrition programs, WIC, school breakfast and lunch, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program provide nutritional support for children year round in places where they live, learn, and play.

Unfortunately, H.R. 5003, which is the Republican reauthorization bill, includes a number of harmful provisions that would roll back years of progress and hamper the ability of children to access healthy meals. As I said, to be very blunt, it makes hunger worse in this country.

Specifically, the bill would undermine the successful Community Eligibility Provision, which some of my colleagues have talked about first, included in the last reauthorization bill that has allowed high- poverty school districts to offer universal school meals to all students. In its first 2 years, CEP helped more than 8.5 million low- income students access free meals.

Instead of building on the success of this program, my Republican friends would severely restrict schools' eligibility for the community eligibility option. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 7,022 schools currently using community eligibility would lose it under this Republican bill, and another 11,647 schools that qualify for community eligibility but who have not yet adopted it would be prevented from doing so in the future.

As we approach the summer months, it is also important to remember that child hunger gets worse in the summer. Consider this: for every six children who get a lunch in school each day, only one receives a meal in the summertime. Instead of being a carefree time for children who depend on getting healthy, reliable meals during the school year, the summer months can be a time of stress, anxiety, and hunger. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Unfortunately, this Republican bill cuts the successful summer EBT pilot program which provides a temporary boost in food assistance benefits during the summer months for families whose children receive free school meals during the school year, and it fails to make necessary investments to expand the reach of summer food service programs so that more kids have access to healthy summer meals in their neighborhoods.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, this bill rolls back, as my colleagues have mentioned, evidence-based standards that make school meals healthier. USDA estimates that more than 90 percent of schools have successfully-- have successfully--implemented these standards.

My grandmother used to say to me when I was growing up that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I wish she was still alive so I could tell her she was right. Food is medicine. When we eat good food, we eat nutritious food, we tend to have healthy lives. If you eat bad food, if you eat junk food, then you end up getting health issues like diabetes, like high blood pressure, and like obesity. I could go on and on and on.

Why in the world would anybody want to lower the nutrition standards in our school meals to give our kids junkier, less nutritious food? What sense does that make?

If my colleagues who are advocating these reversals of smart policy are doing so only because they want to save a few dollars, then let me tell you something: you are saving nothing.

If we don't get this right, if we don't insist that our kids have access to nutritious, healthier food, the medical costs associated with the health challenges that they will experience are astronomical, as my colleague from Wisconsin mentioned earlier, hundreds of billions of dollars in avoidable healthcare costs as a result of children not having access to good food.

Mr. Speaker, 15 million children face hunger in this country. Instead of undoing the success we have already achieved, Congress should be focused on ways we can strengthen these vital child nutrition programs.

Mr. Speaker, let me say, finally, it is hard for me to understand why we have to be here today, why everything is a fight when it comes to dealing with issues of hunger and when it comes to dealing with issues and making sure our kids get access to good nutrition. It is always a fight. It is always a fight to protect so many vital food and nutrition programs that help our kids. There is either a shocking ignorance about the reality of the poverty that millions of our children face in this country or there is simply indifference. Those are the only two ways I can explain what is going on in this Chamber. Whichever one it is, it is a sad excuse for what my Republican friends are trying to do.

Let's come together. This should be a bipartisan issue. There was a time when fighting hunger and when making sure that our kids had access to nutritious food was a bipartisan issue. George McGovern and Bob Dole worked together in the 1970s to strengthen our food and nutrition programs. But now in this Chamber these issues have become controversial.

It is sad because there are a lot of people in this country who are depending on us to find ways to end hunger in America. They are depending on us to make sure that their kids, when they go to school, have access to nutritious food, and that they have access to nutritious food during the summer months as well.

Why are my friends making it so difficult?

Enough. Enough of this. Stop beating up on the most vulnerable people in this country. Let's come together. Let's reject this awful draft of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill. Let's come together and do this right. It is the least we can do.

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