[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H1026]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               NUTRITION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gene Green, is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, today the Committee on Economic 
and Educational Opportunities held a hearing on the Contract With 
America, which deals with our nutrition programs. And a representative 
of the American School Food Service Association testified that if the 
Personal Responsibility Act were enacted as currently written, 40,000 
out of the 93,000 school districts in the United States would stop 
serving school meals. That is breakfast and lunches for early--for 
children who get to school earlier. This, as we recall, was a bill that 
passed in 1946, in recognizing that children needed to have a lunch 
program and a breakfast program to make them ready for school.
  During World War II we found a lot of our children were not up to the 
nutrition standards that we needed. So that is why 1946, this program 
started. The reasoning behind the dramatic elimination of those school 
meals programs is cost. And yet we are literally cutting off our nose 
to spite our face.
  During this hearing today, ``the local perspective,'' five of the six 
witnesses presented were community nutrition providers. A recent study 
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that this bill, if we 
pass it, would cost the state of Texas $15.1 billion in 1996 alone, 
representing a 30-percent cut in funding. Of all the States in the 
Nation, the State of Texas would be the one that would be cut the most. 
And the reason is, and I have an objective summary of that report that 
shows that that 1.1 billion would be cut because the State of Texas 
utilizes more food stamps than most other States. And yet in 
California, that would benefit to the tune of about $600 million under 
this proposal, $650 million to be exact, would benefit because they 
have a higher payment. They actually have less food stamp participation 
and yet they pay $593 per month on the average in food stamp households 
in AFDC, whereas in the State of Texas we only pay $174. So we are 
actually hurting the poorest of the poor by taking away that billion 
dollars from the poor in the State of Texas.
  The formula punishes those States which depend on food stamps the 
most.
  This not only covers nutrition sites in our schools, the breakfast 
program, and the lunch program. But it covers the senior program Meals 
on Wheels. In Harris County, we received $1.5 million in 1994. This
 roughly represented over a million hot meals for seniors. If we pass 
this bill, the cuts by the Personal Responsibility Act would mean 
300,000 a year or 800 meals a day in Harris County alone would not be 
served.

  Lowering the number of Meals on Wheels could add to the health cost 
of these seniors. By taking away the meals from the seniors, we would 
push them to more likely seek assistance in elderly care centers and 
thereby possibly even raising our hospital costs so more seniors would 
be taking advantage of Medicare.
  These senior citizen centers provide more than just a hot meal at 
lunch. They provide also companionship. I have as many as 35 in my own 
district that I visit, when we can get home on Fridays and Mondays, 
although this first hundred days we have not had much opportunity to do 
that, but staff who visit these centers make sure. In our district 
office we offer Social Security assistance and Medicare assistance and 
other assistance. But those seniors who go to those centers oftentimes 
have no one at home and that is the only hot meal that day.
  Yet if we pass this proposal in the Contract With America or Contract 
on American, then we are going to cut these senior citizens from these 
hot meals, not just in Harris County or the State of Texas but 
throughout the country.
  Another proposal that would be cut would be the Women, Infants and 
Children. Again using my frame of reference, in Houston and Harris 
County, the city of Houston is the one that actually funds it or 
provides it with the funding from the Federal Government. This amount 
of funding would represent in Harris County, Texas $13 million cut to 
the local grocers in Houston who benefit from the Women, Infants and 
Children Program.
  The WIC Program, as we call it, is not an entitlement program. The 
program participants not only have financial needs but also nutritional 
needs. This helps with early childhood development. Those children, 
before they become eligible for public school, we can make sure of the 
nutrition that they need in their early years until they do get to 
public school.
  Health costs could increase for these children from Medicaid and also 
provide it for our hospital districts, for example, our public hospital 
systems.
  In a 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, 
President Nixon said of the Federal responsibility for nutrition 
programs, ``a child ill-fed is dull in curiosity, lower in stamina and 
distracted from learning.''
  We do not need to make these cuts in our programs.

                              {time}  1820

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dreier] is recognized for 5 minutes.

  [Mr. DREIER addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in 
the Extensions of Remarks.]

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