[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 101 (Thursday, June 10, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4029-S4031]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Child Nutrition

  Mr. BOOZMAN. Mr. President, across the country, the school year is 
winding down, and students will be on summer

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break. We know that when school is out, many students who receive free 
and reduced-price meals throughout the school year are not getting the 
nutrition that they need.
  The pandemic required us to explore innovative options for getting 
food and nutrition, for getting that assistance to children in need, 
especially those who were in rural and hard-to-serve areas. That is why 
I, along with Senator Leahy, have reintroduced the Hunger-Free Summer 
for Kids Act.
  I am pleased that we have 12 bipartisan cosponsors and the support of 
national organizations like Feeding America, Share Our Strength, Tusk 
Philanthropies, Bread for the World, the Alliance to End Hunger, MAZON: 
A Jewish Response to Hunger, and Save the Children.
  When I served as a school board member many years ago, I saw how 
important the national school meals program is to providing many 
children with healthy meals, helping them to learn and grow. I also saw 
that many kids were left without nutritious food during the summer 
months.
  Seeing this reality is, in part, why I wanted to serve as cochair of 
the Senate Hunger Caucus. It is the reason why I care about these 
programs, ensuring we have a bipartisan child nutrition reauthorization 
process that can include this bill that Senator Leahy and I are 
introducing.
  Before the pandemic, we had data that showed the traditional Summer 
Food Service Program was not serving all of the kids who needed these 
meals. Only one in seven children receiving free or reduced-price meals 
during the school year were receiving meals from the current Summer 
Meals Program.
  Big gaps exist, especially in rural areas. According to Feeding 
America, 86 percent of counties with children most at risk for food 
insecurity are rural counties.
  The current program requires children to come to a feeding site and 
eat their meals with other children. This concept has its benefits, as 
it builds a sense of community, provides a safe place for kids to go, 
and then offers them a chance to participate in other physical and 
enrichment activities.
  However, we know that getting kids to a feeding site can be a real 
challenge. Buses take students to school, but the buses don't run in 
the summer.

  During the pandemic, Congress gave the U.S. Department of Agriculture 
the authority to waive the requirement that kids had to eat meals 
together at feeding sites. This flexibility has spurred innovation with 
public-private partnerships. For instance, in my home State of 
Arkansas, Faulkner County did a tremendous job packing meal boxes to be 
sent home to families. Volunteers have delivered meals through mobile 
delivery routes. Thanks to the Meals to You program that was 
coordinated by the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, more 
than 1.1 million meals were delivered directly to the doorstep of 
almost 9,000 children living in rural Arkansas.
  According to Share Our Strength, there was a 160-percent increase in 
the number of meals served by allowing offsite consumption of meals.
  Another way to ensure kids are receiving access to food is through 
the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer Program. Each child receives a 
set amount of money that is loaded onto an EBT card. Families then can 
shop for food to make sure their kids get the nutrition they need. This 
program has been tested for a number of years by the USDA. The results 
have shown that providing a $30 monthly benefit for a child was 
effective in reducing the most severe category of food insecurity 
during the summer and can lead to positive changes in children's 
nutritional outcomes through the consumption of healthier foods.
  This bill expands how we ensure children receive healthy meals 
throughout the summer.
  The pandemic has certainly shown the importance and the success of 
this program when offsite consumption and EBT are options States can 
utilize to feed children.
  I want to commend the volunteers and staff on the frontlines who are 
there each and every day ensuring that children receive the nutrition 
they need. They work tirelessly, being true heroes to so many families 
during the pandemic. I thank them for their hard work, their 
innovation, and their dedication.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues in the weeks and months 
ahead to see this bill become part of a permanent, bipartisan child 
nutrition reauthorization law. It is important that members of the Ag 
Committee work together in a bipartisan manner, through regular order, 
agreeing on the policy and the offsets that will be required to provide 
schools, States, and families greater certainty into the future. I am 
committed to a bipartisan path forward, and this bill is just the 
beginning.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 247

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, women make invaluable contributions to our 
families, communities, and workplaces. Thankfully, the opportunities 
for women in the workplace have grown tremendously over time and in 
recent decades, and there is no doubt that, without exception or 
qualification, they should always be treated equally and receive equal 
pay for the same work as their male counterparts.
  This week, the Senate considered proceeding to a bill called the 
Paycheck Fairness Act--one that was directed at achieving this goal by 
addressing the gender pay gap. But if we truly care about supporting 
and empowering women in the workplace, it is important that we 
understand exactly what the pay gap is and what exactly it can tell us 
about women's experiences.
  So what is the pay gap? Well, first, there is a crucial distinction 
that we have to make between the unadjusted pay gap and the adjusted 
pay gap.
  When most people refer to the gender pay gap, they mean the 
unadjusted pay gap, or the comparison between the median man's pay and 
the median woman's pay, based only on sex. According to this measure, 
the median earnings of women are 18 percent lower than men. But the 
unadjusted pay gap leaves out key pieces of the puzzle. In reality, 
there are many other factors that influence pay for individual men and 
women, such as industry, occupation, experience, education, 
performance, and in particular, family decisions.
  The adjusted pay gap does take these factors into account and turns 
out to be a much smaller number--a very different number--than the 
unadjusted pay gap. When controlling for these factors, and thus 
comparing men and women with the same jobs and qualifications, the pay 
gap falls to just 2 percent, which can arguably be explained by 
nondiscriminatory factors like performance that other studies have not 
yet addressed.
  The pay gap before and after parenthood tells us something else that 
is key too. This measure suggests that women are paid less not simply 
because they are women but because of the family decisions they make 
typically after having children. Women are far more likely to take on 
more of the caretaker responsibilities within their families and thus 
make work-related tradeoffs that allow them to do so.
  One study in Denmark found that average women's earnings are 
comparable to men's earnings before parenthood but drop after the birth 
of their first child, when hours worked and participation rates tend to 
fall for women.
  Another study by the Harvard Business Review found that women are 
more likely to make decisions to limit work-related travel, choose a 
more flexible job, slow down career pace, make a lateral move, or leave 
a job in order to accommodate family responsibilities.
  Ultimately, the pay gap seems to show in large part the particular 
choices and preferences of women in their career and family paths.
  So in light of this information, what would the Paycheck Fairness Act 
do? This bill would allow employees to sue businesses that pay workers 
different wages even if the differences have nothing to do with the sex 
of the employee at issue. As a result, businesses would be forced to 
ignore the rest of the factors that influence pay, including merit, 
which is and should be the main determinant of earnings. It would 
instead enforce rigid, collective pay scales that would reduce 
flexibility in benefits or hours--the very thing that employees want in 
the workplace.
  If this legislation were to become law, instead of receiving higher 
pay, women would likely find it harder to

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get their foot in the door. Employers could be more reticent to hire 
women in some circumstances, especially those reentering the workforce, 
since they automatically would be included in future gender- or race-
based class action lawsuits, and it would raise costs for businesses 
and hurt wages across the board.
  In short, it is a federally mandated, one-size-fits-all approach to 
pay that would only take away choice, opportunity, and flexibility for 
women--the very things that Congress ought to ensure are allowed. 
Indeed, surveys show that workplace flexibility is incredibly valuable 
to women. One survey estimates that 60 percent of female jobseekers say 
that greater work-life balance and personal well-being are very 
important to them when considering a job, and 46 percent of female 
employees say flextime is the most important benefit a company can 
offer employees. Further research shows that productivity can be 
improved by as much as 50 percent when flexible options are available 
to workers.
  If we are to empower women and make it easier for them to increase 
their earnings, we should not be getting in the way of flexible options 
that can help.
  Thankfully, the rejection of the Paycheck Fairness Act this week 
proved that it is not the right approach. There is, indeed, a better 
path forward. The bill I am proposing, the Working Families Flexibility 
Act, would help provide it.
  For decades, Federal labor laws have unfairly restricted private 
sector employees from choosing either traditional overtime pay or paid 
time off as compensation for overtime hours worked, while granting a 
special exemption for government employees. This legal disparity 
between private sector employees and public sector employees unfairly 
discriminates against working men and women in the private sector, and 
it is long overdue that it be addressed. There is no reason that these 
working moms and dads in the private sector should be prevented from 
receiving the flexibility that employees in the government are able to 
receive.
  My bill would simply amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to allow 
private sector employers to give their employees the option to choose 
either traditional overtime pay or paid time off, both accrued at 1.5 
times the overtime hours worked. It is a totally voluntary proposal for 
both employers and employees. Employers are not forced to offer it, and 
employees are not forced to take it.
  In addition to offering safeguards to ensure that the choice to use 
comp time is voluntary, it retains all existing labor law protections 
for employees, including the 40-hour workweek and overtime accrual 
protections.
  If we truly seek to empower women in the workplace, we ought to give 
them the freedom and flexibility to pursue their careers and the 
families they desire. The Working Families Flexibility Act would do 
just that, and I urge my colleagues to support it.
  This is something that we ought to adopt right now. This is something 
that Federal law already allows for, for government employees, and we 
ought to end the discrimination against private sector employees.
  For that reason, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from 
further consideration of S. 247 and that the Senate proceed to its 
immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be 
considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me 
just say that over the last year, we have heard constantly that you 
should ``stay home when you are sick.'' It is good advice, of course, 
and the right thing to do for public health, and I certainly encourage 
people to do it. But what I thought about every single time was, what 
about the workers who can't just stay home? There are a lot of them.
  Right now, 32 million American workers do not have access to a single 
paid sick day. Let me repeat that. Thirty-two million people in the 
United States will lose pay if they stay home because they are sick or 
because they have to care for a sick loved one. Only 20 percent of 
private sector workers in the United States have paid family leave 
through their employer, meaning millions of workers will lose pay if 
they give birth or have a sick child, for just a few examples.
  What I hear from workers in these situations is that they need to 
know they have the ability to take time off without worrying about 
losing their paycheck and without worrying about whether their boss 
will allow them.
  That is why I am on the floor today to object in the strongest terms 
to the misleadingly titled bill the Senator from Utah just proposed. 
His bill would allow employers to offer workers' comp time instead of 
time-and-a-half pay when workers put in overtime.
  Here is why this won't work when it comes to taking paid leave. Under 
this bill, the so-called Working Families Flexibility Act, workers 
would have no guaranteed right to use the comp time they have earned 
even when there is an emergency. And it actually gets worse from there. 
Under this bill, if a worker's claim is denied, their only option to 
fight back is to request that their comp time be cashed out, and the 
employer has a whole month to comply. As of March 2021, more than half 
of Americans said they were living paycheck to paycheck. A month is not 
going to work for them.
  Anyone who is serious about making sure workers can support 
themselves and care for themselves and their families should reject 
this bill and work with my colleagues and me to pass Senator 
Gillibrand's FAMILY Act and the Healthy Families Act Congresswoman 
DeLauro and I introduced. Our legislation would actually truly give 
workers flexibility and the weight off their shoulders as they navigate 
the kinds of tough times we all encounter in our lives.
  Look, when this pandemic struck, we saw how costly not having paid 
leave has been for our workers, for our families, for our businesses, 
and for our country. Millions of workers were forced to choose between 
the well-being of themselves and their coworkers and their families or 
their paycheck. Millions were infected, and millions more--especially 
women and workers of color--were forced out of their jobs in large part 
due to lacking paid leave or quality, affordable childcare options.
  This pandemic has really made it more clear than ever: It is far past 
time we made paid leave a right for all, not just a privilege for some.
  Now is not the time for more false choices and stress for our 
workers. It is a time to get real solutions over the finish line, so I 
object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that the Senate won't 
choose to make available to private sector workers options that are 
already available to government employees.
  Just to reiterate here, under this legislation, employers are not 
required to offer it; employees are not required to take it. This just 
eliminates the vestigial remains of labor laws passed decades ago that 
denied workers and employers this option. They keep that open for 
government workers. That is discriminatory. It is unfair, and it ought 
to end.