[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2729]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                REPUBLICANS IN THE SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM

  (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, last night and this last 
weekend we heard the Republican majority defend their school lunch 
changes. It is the great Republican shell game for school lunch.
  They promise a 4.5-percent increase under one shell, but they do not 
tell us what is under the Appropriations Committee shell. What is under 
the State shell, when they can cut 20 percent from the School Lunch 
Program and transfer it to other programs?
  The Republicans are playing budgetary shell games with school 
lunches. They are taking a guaranteed school lunch for children and 
subjecting it to the authorization process, to the appropriations 
process, and then subjecting it to whatever a State may want to do up 
to 20 percent. On one hand they promise an increase in funding, on the 
other hand the Committee on Appropriations has been cutting the summer 
youth jobs and other programs for children.
  Are we going to protect the lunch program, or are we going to subject 
it to the Committee on Appropriations and what they are doing now? Will 
school districts be forced to end programs when massive rescissions 
bills come down after they have already bought food? Maybe we should go 
to the kids during the year after they have already had that luncheon 
say, you need to give it back.
  Why is Congress trying to fix a program that has been working since 
1946?


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