[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 53 (Wednesday, March 22, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3534-H3535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   STATE FUNDING AND CHILD NUTRITION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Smith] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Mr. Speaker, you know, every once in a 
whole you have to come back to real numbers that will buy real 
groceries. And I am starting to even get confused listening to the 
other side. So what I want to know, and I would like to ask this of 
your, Representative Hoke.
  I know where we are now, and I can't go home and tell anybody that we 
have increased the school lunch program unless it is in hard dollars. I 
know we are at $6.296 billion right now a year on school lunches. I 
want to know how much it will take to feed those kids in later dollars, 
how much we put in the budget, and I want to make sure we feed those 
kids as many lunches as we are feeding now. You show me that.
  Mr. HOKE. Okay. This has got to be so incredibly confusing to the 
American public watching this and trying to discern what is really 
going on. I can't imagine what could be more confusing until finally 
you are going to have to decide somebody is telling the truth and 
somebody is lying. Let me review.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. I just want real numbers. I don't want 
anything spun. How much are we going to spend in this budget compared 
to the last budget?
  Mr. HOKE. March 20, 1995, from the Congressional Research Service. 
Let me just read the preamble.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. That is the nonpartisan group?
  Mr. HOKE. Yes, that is the nonpartisan group. It is anybody, any 
Member of Congress can ask them to do research. Let me read this. Then 
I will go directly to the numbers.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Thank you.
  Mr. HOKE. All right. This is from Jean Yavis Jones. She is a 
specialist in Food and Agriculture Policy in the Food and Agriculture 
Section. The subject is Child Nutrition: State funding under current 
law and block grants proposed in H.R. 1214. That is what we are talking 
about, the nutrition block grants.
  This memorandum responds to numerous congressional requests for 
information on the effect that recent 
[[Page H3535]] proposals to block grant child nutrition programs would 
have on the States. The attached tables compare estimates of fiscal 
year 1995 and fiscal year 1996 funding to States under current law to 
the estimated amount of funding that States would receive under the 
child nutrition block grants contained in H.R. 1214 as introduced on 
March 13, 1995.
  Now, let me go to the table. Here is the table. This is school-based 
block grants and current law funding by States and the total. I am 
going to give you the total. The total for all the school-based 
nutrition programs for fiscal year 1995 was $6.295 billion.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Does that include breakfast and the feeding 
programs?
  Mr. HOKE. That is breakfast, that is after school, that is school 
lunches, school snacks, all. There are five programs in all. The amount 
that is estimated by CBO for fiscal year 1996 under current law is 
$6.607 billion. That takes into account, and I will read it to you 
exactly.
  What it does, it says that those amounts are based, it takes into 
account the adjustments that will show the projected and actual changes 
in overall Federal obligations, and it takes into account the number of 
students that will be in the program and also inflation. So it takes 
into account exactly what my friends on the other side of the aisle are 
talking about.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. So increases in food and increases in kids?
  Mr. HOKE. Precisely. Precisely. So that is what the current law is, 
okay? $6.296 billion in fiscal year 1995 to $6.607 billion in fiscal 
year 1996.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Now that is what they say we will need to 
keep up, to make sure we don't get behind?
  Mr. HOKE. We need to get to $6.607 billion in 1996.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Where are we then in the budget?
  Mr. HOKE. The school-based block grant is at $6.681 billion, $6.681 
billion. The difference between the block grant and the fiscal year 
1996 CBO estimate that takes into account the demographic changes as 
well as the inflation is $73 million.
  In other words, under the block grant program, the Republican program 
that is being criticized here in a bombastic way, that doesn't begin to 
square with the facts. We are increasing the funding for school 
nutrition programs by $73 million in fiscal year 1996.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Actually, we are increasing it $384 
million, but part of that is to keep up with costs of inflation and new 
children. So we are going over what it costs and kicking in $74 
million, sending it back to the States and saying get your grubby hands 
off it at the State level, don't spend much on administration, get it 
back to kids?
  Mr. HOKE. You are absolutely right, Linda. We are, in fact, 
increasing it by $384 million over what we are spending in 1995. We are 
increasingly it by a third, more than a third of a billion dollars.
  Mrs. SMITH of Washington. Well, this grandma likes that. I think we 
have done a great job.


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