[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 125 (Friday, September 18, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10585-S10586]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       CHILD NUTRITION AND WIC REAUTHORIZATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998

  (During consideration of S. 2286, the Child Nutrition and WIC 
Reauthorization Amendments of 1998, on September 17, 1998, statements 
by Mr. Lugar and Mr. Santorum were inadvertently omitted. The permanent 
Record will be corrected to include the following:)
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Child 
Nutrition Reauthorization, but also to express disappointment with the 
manner in which it is being considered by the Senate. While I support 
the reauthorization of the federal nutrition and feeding programs, I 
had hoped for the opportunity to offer an amendment to the bill.
  The amendment I had hoped to offer would enable the United States 
Department of Agriculture to purchase lower-priced, non-quota peanuts 
for use in school feeding programs. Adoption of this amendment would 
make school feeding programs more cost effective and free up funds to 
buy additional peanuts and other foods for both the school lunch 
program and other federal food assistance programs. The amendment would 
save $14 million for the federal nutrition programs, money that could 
be put to use feeding more children and families.
  I want to offer an explanation for why the amendment will not be 
considered and also to express my appreciation to those who were 
prepared to support it. Several Senators were ready to debate the 
merits of the amendment, and I appreciate their support. Other 
supporters include nutrition advocacy groups who have worked very hard 
on behalf of the amendment.
  After our return from the August break, the Senate tried to clear 
this bill for action. Several Senators executed holds on the bill as a 
result of the amendment I intended to offer. Given the inability to 
remove those holds and given the few days that remain in the 
legislative calendar, I asked my Agriculture Committee Chairman, 
Senator Lugar, to proceed with the bill so that he may get it to 
conference and hopefully enacted before adjournment in October.
  For the benefit of my colleagues who know my longstanding opposition 
to the peanut program, let me make clear that my amendment would have 
done nothing to improve the price of peanuts for manufacturers of 
peanut products. Instead, it simply aimed to improve the operation of 
the school nutrition programs.
  Generally speaking, peanuts cannot be grown and sold for human 
consumption in the United States unless the grower has a quota. This 
quota is really a license, and it enables growers to obtain a premium 
price for their production. Non-quota peanuts grown in America are no 
different than their quota cousins, except for the price. Non-quota 
peanuts that are grown in the U.S. for the export market have an 
approximate price of $350 per ton, whereas quota peanuts run as much as 
$650 per ton.
  My amendment would simply allow the United States government to buy 
non-quota peanuts at the same price that we sell American peanuts to 
foreign countries.
  This step is not without precedent. In fact, the Northeast Interstate 
Dairy Compact, which Congress authorized in 1996, has a similar 
provision to allow schools to be exempt from paying the artificially 
higher milk prices that are the result of the dairy compact.
  Additionally, Congress has weighed this step in the past. The House 
Committee on Appropriations twice called attention to this problem in 
FY 1994 and FY 1995 Agriculture Appropriation Subcommittee Reports. The 
Subcommittee found that USDA would save approximately $14.4 million in 
peanut and peanut product purchases for the food assistance program if 
USDA purchased non-quota peanuts.

  In these two committee reports for the FY 1994 and FY 1995 
Agriculture Appropriations' bills, the Committee directed the USDA to 
prepare and submit legislation to the appropriations committees of 
Congress to amend the peanut program. That legislation would require 
USDA to purchase non-quota peanuts at world prices for use in domestic 
feeding programs. To this point, I am not aware that the USDA has ever 
responded to the Committee's direction.
  Mr. President, passage of this amendment makes sense. Peanut products 
are an extremely popular and nutritious food for millions of people, 
especially children. High concentrations of important minerals and 
valuable nutrients make this food an especially important one. If we 
provide a means for the federal government to buy peanuts for American 
school children for the same price that we sell American peanuts to 
consumers in other countries, we can save millions of dollars and 
enable the government to purchase nutritious food to help additional 
people.
  Moreover, we can improve the school nutrition programs with a minimal 
cost to growers. Despite the suggestion of doom and gloom from the 
defenders of the peanut program, the amount of quota peanuts purchased 
for government food assistance programs is less than 2 percent of the 
national peanut quota production. Thus, this amendment would have a 
negligible effect on peanut quota holders--many of whom, I hasten to 
add, do not grow peanuts themselves.
  Mr. President, federal feeding programs are very price sensitive. In 
times of high prices for specific commodities,

[[Page S10586]]

it is not uncommon for USDA to seek substitutes for even the most 
popular food items. in the early 1990s, for example, USDA temporarily 
suspended feeding program purchases of peanut butter because peanut 
prices had risen sharply. If the primary goal of the National School 
Lunch Program and food assistance programs is to alleviate this 
nation's malnutrition and hunger, it is wrong for the federal 
government to waste limited financial resources on buying quota peanuts 
to further support a small special interest group of peanut quota 
holders who are already subsidized by the American consumer.
  Again, Mr. President, I support passage of the child nutrition 
reauthorization, but am disappointed in not being able to offer my 
amendment. I thank those that have worked so hard on its behalf. While 
the opportunity is not available today to offer the amendment, I have 
every intention of offering this proposal to relevant legislation in 
the future.
  Mr. LUGAR. Mr. President, I rise today in support of S. 2286, the 
Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Amendments of 1998. The child 
nutrition programs have been critically important in helping meet the 
nutritional needs of our children. The bill before us, which was 
unanimously reported out of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, 
Nutrition, and Forestry, is a bipartisan effort to reauthorize and 
improve these successful programs. Nutrition programs in the Congress 
have a long history of bipartisan support and cooperation and I am 
pleased to report that this bill is no exception.
  As an Indianapolis school board member and the city's mayor in the 
1960's and 1970's, I saw firsthand the need to provide nutritional 
assistance to children. Since that time, the child nutrition programs 
have changed in many ways. Although the programs may need some fine 
tuning, today's programs have been successful in ensuring that our 
nation's children have access to nutritious foods, providing a critical 
nutrition safety net.
  In 1997, approximately 89,000 schools enrolling 46 million children 
participated in the National School Lunch program. Although 
participation in the school breakfast program is not as large as that 
in the school lunch program, it has continued to grow. Since 1994, 
school breakfast participation has increased about 13 percent so that 
now over 70 percent of schools operating a school lunch program also 
operate a school breakfast program.
  The WIC program, which provides nutritious foods and other support to 
lower-income infants and children (up to age 5), and pregnant, 
postpartum, and breast-feeding women, has been successful at reducing 
the number of low-birth-weight babies. Its success has led to strong 
support over the years. In 1997, average monthly WIC participation was 
7.4 million persons. In many states, the program has reached the long 
sought after goal of full funding.
  The bill before us makes improvements to the child nutrition 
programs. Recently we have seen reports on fraud and abuse in the WIC 
and Child and Adult Care Food Programs. S. 2286 strengthens the anti-
fraud provisions in both programs. The bill requires WIC recipients to 
be physically present when being certified or recertified for the 
program. The bill also requires that recipients provide documentation 
of their income to prove that they are in fact eligible to participate 
in the program. The legislation cracks down on fraudulent vendors 
participating in the WIC program. Under most circumstances, WIC vendors 
who are convicted of trafficking will be permanently disqualified 
unless it can be proven that the disqualification will cause undue 
hardship for WIC recipients. In the Child and Adult Care Food Program, 
State agencies will be required to visit child care sites prior to 
approving participation by a provider.
  The bill also makes amendments to streamline school food service 
operations. Specifically, S. 2286 allows schools to operate after-
school snack programs through the National School Lunch Program rather 
than separately through the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Without 
this change, those schools choosing to operate an after-school program, 
along with the school lunch program, would have to submit paperwork for 
two separate programs. Streamlining these operations will free up 
precious time so that school food service personnel can better serve 
our nation's children. The bill also improves access, for low-income 
children up to age 18, to the after-school snack and the summer food 
service programs.
  The bill creates a new universal school breakfast pilot program that 
will evaluate the effect of providing free breakfasts to elementary 
school children, regardless of income, on school performance and 
dietary intake. The new spending in this bill is fully offset by 
rounding down reimbursement rates to the nearest whole cent for meals 
served by schools and child care centers.
  Finally, the bill reauthorizes the child nutrition programs through 
fiscal year 2003.
  Mr. President, S. 2286 was unanimously reported out of the Senate 
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on June 25, 1998. I 
urge my colleagues to support this bill, thus ensuring that our 
nation's children continue to have access to these important programs.

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