[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 41 (Monday, March 6, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E520]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                             SCHOOL LUNCHES

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                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, March 6, 1995
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member highly commends to his 
colleagues this editorial which appeared in the Omaha World-Hearld on 
March 2, 1995.
      GOP Would Keep School Lunches and Let States Run the Program

       The notion was spread that Republicans in Congress are 
     about to snatch school lunches from the mouths of hungry 
     kids.
       It's not going to happen. It hasn't even been proposed. 
     Such talk is part of a gross misunderstanding, orchestrated 
     by critics of a GOP plan that would transfer the school 
     nutrition program from the federal government to the states.
       Nobody is proposing that the school lunch program be 
     eliminated. Nobody is recommending that low-income kids be 
     denied free lunches. Certainly nobody is urging that less be 
     spent to keep poor children properly fed--and therefore 
     attentive--during the school day.
       Neither does the issue have anything to do with shutting 
     down the cafeteria lines. Some Republicans merely believe 
     that the states can feed the kids more efficiently and bring 
     the program's runaway costs under control. Those Republicans 
     may well be right.
       Critics say that states have a poor record in providing 
     social services. Some states have indeed done poorly, 
     although the critics sometimes have to reach back to 
     Mississippi or Alabama in the 1950s or 60's to illustrate 
     their contention. Times have changed. No good reason exists 
     that Governors Nelson, Branstad and Romer and their 
     colleagues shouldn't have the opportunity to show whether 
     they can run the lunch program more efficiently and 
     compassionately than the federal government has run it.
       If the states revert to the behavior of a Mississippi in 
     the 1950s, of course, Congress should take another look. But 
     nothing suggests that they would do that.
       Unfortunately, the GOP plan has been widely misrepresented. 
     President Clinton said it threatens the interests of 
     children. Ellen Goodman, a Boston Globe columnist, made it 
     sound monstrous when she wrote that the country ``is simply 
     not too broke to feed poor schoolchildren,'' Sen. Patrick 
     Leahy, D-Vt., called it despicable and declared that children 
     would go hungry if it passed. An Agriculture Department 
     official said decades of progress in good nutrition were 
     about to be reversed.
       Such overheated rhetoric.
       Sponsors of the proposal deny that spending would be cut at 
     all. In 1994, the federal appropriation was $4.3 billion, 
     with the states adding funds of their own. The GOP plan would 
     allocate block grants of $6.78 billion next year, rising to 
     $7.8 billion in 2000. That's not a cut. But critics have 
     another way of measuring things. They note that earlier 
     projections were $5 billion to $7 billion higher over the 
     five-year period. That much will be needed, they contend, to 
     meet population growth and inflation.
       Whether the projects reflect genuine need, however, is 
     debatable. Most beneficiaries in the school lunch program are 
     kids from middle-income and upper-income families. They 
     receive subsidized meals even though they are deceptively 
     told that they pay ``full price.'' In the language of the 
     school-lunch bureaucracy, ``full-price'' means that the 
     government is paying only 32 cents of the total instead of 
     the $1.90 it pays for low-income kids.
       Under the Republican plan, there would be no subsidies for 
     the rich and middle-income lunchers. But that hardly 
     constitutes forcing children to go hungry. Since when did the 
     government have the right to use the tax of low-income and 
     middle-income people to subsidize families who live in 
     $400,000 houses and earn $300,000 a year?
       Other critics of the GOP plan stress the welfare aspect. 
     They talk about the lunches as a way of fighting hunger among 
     kids who may have no alternative to the subsidized meals they 
     receive at school. Some of the critics say the number of 
     needy kids is certain to grow in the next few years.
       Suppose they are right. It would provide further 
     vindication for the Republican approach, under which middle-
     income families and rich families would pay their own way to 
     free more funds for the needy. That isn't a bad thing. 
     Certainly it would constitute the dreadful assault on 
     defenseless children that critics have so deceptively accused 
     the Republicans of proposing.
     

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