Press Releases

M. Speaker, we have the opportunity today to pass a very good bill that will improve the lives of our children.

And I believe we must seize that opportunity.

I want to thank Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Miller, Congresswoman DeLauro, Congresswoman McCarthy and others who have worked so hard on this issue.

And I want to say a special ‘thank you' to First Lady Michelle Obama. She has been an incredible champion for our children, particularly in the areas of nutrition and obesity.

She has challenged us to live up to one of our highest moral obligations - to make sure that the children of this nation have the nutritious food they need to grow, thrive and succeed.

As I've said many times before, hunger is a political condition. We have the resources to end hunger - particularly childhood hunger - in this country. What we need is the political will to make it happen.

President Obama has pledged to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. If we support that goal, then we must pass this bill.

I hope that the members of this House - all of us, Democrat and Republican - can come together today to summon that political will.

There isn't a single community in America that's hunger free. Talk to any food bank - they'll tell you that the demand has never been greater. And far too many of the people who need help are children.

The Child Nutrition bill we will take up this week gives us a chance to provide healthy meals to hundreds of thousands of children who need them.

It's also important to remember that hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin. The fact is that highly-processed, empty-calorie foods are less expensive than fresh nutritious foods. That's why so many families are forced to make unhealthy choices.

This bill increases the reimbursement to schools for meals by 6 cents a meal. 6 cents. And that's the first increase in 30 years!

Too often, the only nutritious food our children get is in a school setting, so this bill also increases access to after-school programs.

And the bill helps communities to establish farm-to-school networks, which are not just good for our children, but good for our local farmers.

Now, it's no secret that I've had concerns with how this bill is paid for - and I remind my colleagues that it IS fully paid for. The cuts to the SNAP, or Food Stamp, program don't make a lot of sense to me. I don't believe we should be taking access to food away from some people in order to provide for others.

But we have been assured - repeatedly - by the President and the White House that they will work with us to restore those cuts. And I look forward to working with the Administration and my colleagues to make sure the White House lives up to that commitment.

Quite frankly, if I didn't believe that the commitment to restore SNAP cuts was real, I would have a hard time voting for the underlying legislation.

This bill - this exact same piece of legislation -- passed UNANIMOUSLY in the Senate. Every single member of the Senate, including a who's who of the most conservative Republicans, voted to support reauthorizing our child nutrition programs.

Unfortunately, from what I heard in the Rules Committee last night, that won't happen today in the House.

My friends on the other side of the aisle have no problem expanding wasteful weapons systems. They have no problem expanding tax cuts for millionaires on Wall Street. But apparently, some of them have a problem with expanding access to nutritious food for our children.

They say it's an outrageous example of big government or that a high school basketball team would be prohibited from having a bake sale. Nonsense. Utter nonsense. As the President of the National PTA has said, QUOTE, -The measure will effectively eliminate the constant presence of junk food in school while allowing reasonable practices like periodic PTA or other school group fundraisers, such as bake sales, and the sale of hot dogs and soda at afterschool sporting events.- END QUOTE.

An extra few million for a hedge-fund manager who doesn't need it? No problem, my Republican friends say. But Heaven forbid we spend another 6 cents to make sure our kids have a more healthy school lunch.

Those may be their priorities, M. Speaker, but they aren't mine. And they aren't the priorities of the people of my district.

They will say that -No one wants our children to go hungry.- Fair enough. Here's their opportunity to put their vote where their rhetoric is. Here's their opportunity to demonstrate that their concern for the hungry in this country is more than just lip service.

I understand the politics here. It's pretty simple. If the President is for it, my Republican friends are against it.

But I would ask them - plead with them - to check those politics at the door just this once. Please don't sacrifice an opportunity to improve the lives of millions of our children on the altar of partisan politics.

The need to act is clear. Our moral obligation is clear. Our children are getting sicker and sicker and sicker. If kids don't have enough nutritious food to eat, they don't learn. We are wasting millions and millions of dollars on health care for diseases like diabetes and heart disease that are preventable with a healthier diet.

Today we can begin to turn that tide.

Please join us in doing the right thing. I urge support for this rule and the underlying bill and I reserve the balance of my time.

Update: The Child Nutrition Bill was passed on December 2, 2010.