[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H3125]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  SCHOOL NUTRITION AND FAMILY PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues on the other 
side insist upon trying to tell the country that a cut is not a cut. 
But the problem with their calculations are as we talk to more and more 
local school districts, they clearly realize that these are cuts. The 
School districts and school nutrition programs will have less money 
over the next 5 years to feed children than they have under the current 
services budget by CBO that will allow them to continue to serve the 
number of children that they are serving now.
  Monroe County schools up near Rochester, NY, they are talking about 
serving 7,800 fewer children than they would otherwise be able to serve 
in the coming year. The point is this, that when you look at the cuts 
in school lunch programs, you see that the Republican proposal is off 
by some $2.3 billion. They can say this is not a cut, but the fact is 
it is a cut, because those children who would otherwise be served in 
this program over the next 5 years, many of them simply are not going 
to be able to be served.
  If they choose to serve every child, they have to decide to cut back 
on the meal and nutrition component of that meal, and as we know from 
many of these children, this is where they get a good portion of their 
nutrition in the entire day. They can decide to raise the price to 
those who are now paying a reduced price meal. The fact is when we have 
seen that, a good portion of the reduced price young people are forced 
to drop out of the program because they simply do not have in their 
family income sufficient money to increase that price. They can choose 
to throw all of the paying children out of the program who pay full 
price for the meal, but as we know, when you do that, you start to lose 
the economics of the program and programs close down as a result of 
that.
  So what we have here is a mismatch of about $7 billion in nutrition 
programs over what we should be spending to serve this population as 
opposed to what the Republicans are offering in the welfare reform bill 
under the child nutrition components. They say that they are offering 
$4.5 billion every year, and that is supposed to make everybody here 
believe that that in fact takes care of the problem. But the
 problem is that the 4.5 percent they are offering every year is not 
based upon the total cost of what it costs to deliver school lunches 
and pay for them under the current program, because it does not include 
the cost of the commodities, so that is excluded from the 4.5 percent. 
The cost of education is excluded from the 4.5 percent, and in fact 
they omit almost 20 percent of the funds currently used to provide 
nutrition programs for our young people, and that is why the 4.5 
percent then, even though they add it every year, falls further and 
further behind, until by the 5th year, we see there is a gap in the 
nutrition component of my Republican colleagues of a little over $7 
billion. That is roughly in the school lunch component because of 2 
million children over the next 5 years that otherwise would be served 
under the current services budget as opposed to those who will not be 
served.

  Now, the Republicans also want to convince everybody in America that 
they are not cutting meals, they are only cutting the bureaucracy. The 
bureaucracy at the Federal level for all nutrition programs is $140 
million a year. $140 million a year. If you do it over the 5 years, it 
is roughly $700 million. They are cutting $7 billion out of the 
program. So obviously it is not just the bureaucracy.
  The cuts go far beyond the bureaucracy at the Federal level. Where do 
the cuts go? They go right to the school lunches, to the participation 
in the WIC program, to the school breakfast programs, to the nutrition 
education programs that are sponsored by this program.
  What does that mean? That means a good many of our poor and our near-
poor, the working poor in this country who rely on this program for 
nutrition, simply will no longer be able to do so to the same extent 
that they are today.
  They are not talking about waste, fraud, and abuse. We had those 
problems many years ago when the private sector thought it was open 
season on the school lunch program and they could deliver substandard 
meals and poorly packaged meals and stale meals and charge us. We are 
not talking about that in the WIC program, when we had the problems of 
being ripped off by some of the largest food companies in this country 
that thought they could sell us substandard formula or sell it to us at 
rates that far exceed the going rate.
  Unfortunately, in the Republicans' proposal, they no longer include 
the competitive bid process, which would save us a billion dollars, and 
we were using that money to plow back into providing the services for 
pregnant women and newborn infants. So the bottom line is that a cut is 
a cut. There is a $7 billion gap between this and whatever.
  I ask my colleagues, and Mr. Cunningham is on the Armed Services 
Committee, if someone said they were only reducing the growth of the 
defense budget, I suspect they would call it a cut. That is what they 
have been calling it over the last several years whenever it is 
suggested is that a cut take place or a reduction in the growth. But if 
you are a hungry child, the $7 billion gap that you create means that 
lunches will not be delivered, and that is the simple fact. The numbers 
cannot be denied. I assume that is why they are so frantically trying 
to convince people all is well in the school lunch program. It is not, 
and it is not well for the children.


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