Concerning the importance of the distribution of food in schools to hungry or malnourished children around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Committee on International Relations, for yielding me the time and for his very heartfelt words. I also want to thank the chairman of the committee, Chairman Hyde, as well as Ranking Member Lantos, for their leadership and their commitment to ending hunger and for their support of U.S. food aid programs. I also want to extend my gratitude to Chairman Smith and to my colleague from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is the ranking Democrat on the agricultural appropriations committee, for all of their incredible efforts to combat hunger here in the United States and around the world. It was through their bipartisan leadership that the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food For Education and Child Nutrition Program came to be established in the farm bill reauthorization.

Over the past few years, I have learned a great deal about global child hunger from my House colleagues, from former Senators George McGovern and Bob Dole, from our hardworking officers at USDA and USAID, from the staff of the U.N. World Food Program, and from the many organizations that carry out U.S.-funded school feeding and development projects around the world, groups like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, CARE, Land O'Lakes, Counterpart International and Mercy Corps, to name but a few.

I now know there are over 800 million people around the world for whom chronic hunger is a way of life, and, too often, a way of death. Over 300 million of these people are children and over half of these children do not attend school, mainly girls.

Every year, 6 million children in our world die of hunger-related causes. As David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, has stated so eloquently, ``Even one child starving to death is a tragedy. Six million is a global catastrophe and a preventable one.''

Last November, the U.N. food and agriculture organization released its 2003 report on hunger. It found that after falling steadily during the 1990s, hunger is again on the rise. In the developing world, the number of malnourished people grew by an average of 4.5 million a year for the past 3 years. The report also found that hunger exacerbates the AIDS crisis, drives rural people into the cities, and forces women and children to trade sex for food and money.

But we can help break that cycle. We have learned from projects carried out around the world that school feeding programs are one of the most effective strategies to combat hunger and poverty and convince poor families to send their children to school. When programs are offered, enrollment and attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls. Instead of working or searching for food to combat hunger, children have the chance to go to school. Providing food at school is a simple, but effective, means to improve literacy and help poor children break out of poverty.

With the support of President Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, the McGovern-Dole program

began as a $300 million pilot program in 2001, providing nutritious meals in school settings to nearly 7 million children in 38 countries.

Wheat from Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon went to feed children at schools in Bolivia and Lebanon. Corn, milk, and soybeans from farmers in Kansas and Wisconsin fed children in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Lentils from Idaho and Washington helped children return to school in Afghanistan. Beans from Colorado, rice from Texas and Louisiana, cooking oil from Florida and Tennessee, the bounty of America's farmers found its way to children attending humble schools around the world.

Mr. Speaker, global hunger, ignorance, and poverty are threats to our national security, and they are threats to our national spirit. How can our world be secure if hunger drives desperate people to ideological extremes? I firmly believe the McGovern-Dole program serves our national interests by attacking the breeding grounds of terrorism: hunger, poverty, ignorance, and despair, while at the same time ensuring that children receive meals in settings where they receive a quality education, not hate-filled indoctrination. At the end of the day, it will be programs like McGovern-Dole that ultimately triumph over poverty and terror.

S. Con. Resolution 114 commends the important role these programs play in the fight against hunger and in promoting basic education. It supports the expansion of the McGovern-Dole program and urges the President to work with the U.N. and other nations to increase international support for school feeding programs. By expanding the McGovern-Dole program, we can reach even more school-age children. We can help stabilize communities devastated by HIV/AIDS, and we can help developing nations achieve self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, international school feeding programs work. I commend this bill to my colleagues, and I urge them to support it.

I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time.

I want to thank the gentleman from California, the Ranking Member of the International Relations Committee Mr. Lantos, for yielding me time. And I especially want to thank Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos for their leadership and commitment to ending hunger and for their support of U.S. food aid programs. It was through their bipartisan leadership that the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program came to be established in the farm bill reauthorization.

Over the past few years, I have learned a great deal about global child hunger from my House colleagues; from former Senators George McGovern and Bob Dole; from our hard-working officers at USDA and USAID; from the staff of the UN World Food Program; and from the many organizations that carry out US-funded school feeding and development projects around the world--groups like Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, CARE, Land O' Lakes, Counterpart International, and Mercy Corps, to name but a few.

I now know there are more than 800 million people around the world for whom chronic hunger is a way of life, and too often, a way of death. Over 300 million of these people are children, and over half of these children do not attend school, mainly the girls.

Every year, 6 million children in our world die of hunger-related causes. As David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, has stated so eloquently: ``Even one child starving to death is a tragedy. Six million is a global catastrophe--and a preventable one.''

Last November, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released its 2003 report on hunger. It found that after falling steadily during the 1990s, hunger is again on the rise. In the developing world, the number of malnourished people grew by an average of 4.5 million a year for the past three years. The report also found that hunger exacerbates the AIDS crisis, drives rural people into the cities, and forces women and children to trade sex for food and money.

But we can help break that cycle. We have learned from projects carried out around the world that school feeding programs are one of the most effective strategies to combat hunger and poverty, and convince poor families to send their children to school. When programs are offered, enrollment and attendance rates increase significantly, particularly for girls. Instead of working or searching for food to combat hunger, children have the chance to go to school. Providing food at school is a simple but effective means to improve literacy and help poor children break out of poverty.

With the support of President Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, the McGovern-Dole program began as a $300 million pilot program in 2001, providing nutritious meals in school settings to nearly 7 million children in 38 countries. Wheat from Illinois, Minnesota, and Oregon went to feed children at schools in Bolivia and Lebanon. Corn, milk and soy beans from farmers in Kansas and Wisconsin fed children in Nicaragua and Guatemala. Lentils from Idaho and Washington helped children return to school in Afghanistan. Beans from Colorado, rice from Texas and Louisiana, cooking oil from Florida and Tennessee--the bounty of America's farmers found its way to children attending humble schools around the world.

Mr. Speaker, global hunger, ignorance and poverty are threats to our national security, and they are threats to our national spirit. How can our world be secure if hunger drives desperate people to ideological extremes? I firmly believe the McGovern-Dole program serves our national security interests by attacking the breeding grounds of terrorism--hunger, poverty, ignorance and despair--while at the same time ensuring that children receive meals in settings where they receive a quality education, not hate-filled indoctrination. At the end of the day, it will be programs like McGovern-Dole that ultimately triumph over poverty and terror.

S. Con. Res. 114 commends the important role these programs play in the fight against hunger and in promoting basic education. It supports the expansion of the McGovern-Dole program, and urges the president to work with the UN and other nations to increase international support for school feeding programs.

By expanding the McGovern-Dole program we can reach even more school- age children; we can help stabilize communities devastated by HIV/AIDS; and we can help developing nations achieve self-sufficiency and prosperity.

Mr. Speaker, many individuals and organizations deserve mention for the role they played in launching the Global Food for Education Initiative (GFEI) pilot program and for establishing the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. First and foremost are the two gentlemen who are the namesakes of this program, former Senators McGovern and Dole. They have dedicated their lives to ending hunger and continue to be an inspiration to me and all my congressional colleagues on these issues. Another leader in this effort is former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman, who had seen first hand the benefits of basic school feeding programs funded through USDA under its 416(b) Commodity Credit Corporation commodity surplus program. He knew these programs needed to expand and reach even more children, schools and communities, and he embraced the vision presented to him by Senators McGovern, Dole and myself. Secretary Glickman helped to organize a meeting at the White House with the President and his foreign policy and national security staff, as well as representatives from USAID and USDA. I remember President Clinton, upon conclusion of the formal presentation of the plan for expanded school feeding programs, looking up and saying, ``This is a simple concept that could have a great impact. Let's make it happen.'' And that is how the White House came to launch the $300 million pilot program just a few months later.

The GFEI pilot program was actually implemented under the Bush Administration and Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman. I would be remiss in my remarks should I fail in offering my praise to Mary Chambliss, Deputy Administrator of USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service/ Export Credit Department. She and her staff took the description of an initiative formally announced by President Clinton at the July 2000 G-8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan, and turned it into a living and breathing reality, one which has benefited more than 7 million children world- wide.

Many Members of Congress in this House and in the other body have been true leaders in helping to build a genuinely broad, bipartisan coalition in support of the McGovern-Dole program. In particular, I would like to express my appreciation to Representatives Jo Ann Emerson, Marcy Kaptur, Doug Bereuter, Jim Leach, Don Manzullo, George Nethercutt, Leonard Boswell, Tim Johnson and Mark Green, who along with former Members of Congress Tony Hall, John Thune and Eva Clayton, were the original cosponsors of legislation to create the McGovern-Dole school feeding program. In the other body, leadership was provided by Senators, Dick Durbin, Richard Lugar, Patrick Leahy, Mike DeWine, Tom Harkin, Tom Daschle, Byron Dorgan, Edward Kennedy and Herbert Kohl.

Since the establishment of the McGovern-Dole program, especially in efforts to increase funding to maintain and establish these global

school feeding programs, additional Members of Congress have stepped forward and taken leadership roles, including Representatives Frank Wolf and Tom Lantos and Senators Pat Roberts, Sam Brownback, Elizabeth Dole, and Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Speaker, the McGovern-Dole program and the initial pilot program would not have been successful were it not for the dedication and experience of the U.S. private voluntary organizations that implement these programs around the world--many of which I noted earlier in my remarks--and the United Nations World Food Program. My staff and I have visited several of these programs in Indonesia, Colombia and elsewhere, and we all owe them our gratitude and admiration for their work.

In addition, I would like to thank several other groups that helped me understand the needs and requirements of high-quality school feeding programs and how such programs might effectively reduce hunger among the world's children and attract them to enrolling and staying in school. These organizations include Friends of the World Food Program, Bread for the World, and Food Aid Coalition, Land O'Lakes, the American Soybean Association, the National Farmers Union, the American Farm Bureau Association, and the American School Food Service Association.

No individual program can end hunger, not here at home and certainly not around the world. But I believe that it is possible to end hunger, especially hunger among children, if we simply have the political will to make it happen. The McGovern-Dole school feeding program and other U.S.-funded school feeding and food security programs are vital components in this effort, and I am grateful to be part of the bipartisan congressional coalition in support of these programs.

Mr. Speaker, international school feeding programs work. I commend this bill to my colleagues and I urge them to vote in support of S. Con. Res. 114.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the eloquent gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) for yielding me this time and thank him for his great work on this and so many other issues, including humanitarian concerns around our globe. Also to the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Chairman Smith), who is with us here tonight, for moving this legislation, and to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), who has been such a faithful leader as well. It is a joy to be with them.

Mr. Speaker, I will share a story about the idea that anchors this program and how it originally started. In February of 2000, I had the pleasure of visiting with Senator George McGovern while he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. At that time he shared with me an editorial that he had written that he was hoping would get published in the Washington Post at the end of that month, and it was.

Referring to our own school lunch program here in our country, he asked a simple but provocative question, this man of the world and a decorated fighter pilot from World War II. He said, ``Why not provide a similar modest meal every day for every needy child in the world?'' He was thinking big, as he always thought big, and he knew that hunger and poverty was at the root of desperation, that it is at the root of what makes young people susceptible to the siren cry of all that is horrible, including terrorism. And he knew this before 9-11 because he had worked on it throughout his career, from his days as director of the Food for Peace Program through his days in the Senate and to this very moment as one of the world's most eloquent proponents on behalf of people who ask only for a fair chance at a decent life.

We came back to Washington, and when Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman was Secretary and Under Secretary for Farm and International Agricultural Programs was Gus Schumacher, we were able to move legislation through the administration and this House as part of the fiscal 2001 appropriation bill to support the beginnings of this program. Later that summer, President Clinton announced the creation of the program, encouraging other nations to join with us; and this all culminated in the McGovern-Dole Global Food Program, established as one of the greatest accomplishments of the 2002 Farm bill.

We started with $300 million, but unfortunately that declined every year, bottoming out in the current fiscal year of $56 million. The bill that we had on the floor yesterday raised it to a level of $75 million but serving only a fraction of the need that Senator McGovern had originally imagined; that well over $1 billion, we spend all of that on weapons, but here is food. Just imagine if we could put food in schools that would counter the madrassas in some of the most troubled parts of the world, what a difference we could make.

So I am pleased to join with my colleagues tonight to commend the gentlemen for bringing this wonderful bill to the floor to recognize the McGovern-Dole Global Food Program and to provide the kind of funding and support for it that could affect the lives of literally millions and millions of the young people of the Earth who will be our leaders of the future.

So as Senator McGovern said in his original editorial, there is no more useful task in the modern world than feeding the children on whom the future depends, and it is the right thing to do.

I include the following material for the Record:

[From the Washington Post Web site, Feb. 27, 2000]

Too Many Children Are Hungry. Time for Lunch

(By George McGovern)

Rome.--On a recent fact-finding trip through Africa that

took me to some of the most painfully destitute areas of the

planet, I visited villages where conditions were

heartbreaking: overcrowded shacks, no water safe to drink, no

medical care, primitive agriculture, emaciated women and

children. What touched my soul most deeply was one village

school. Hungry youngsters yawned or stared vacantly,

seemingly unable to concentrate on anything other than their

empty stomachs. During recess, there was no childish

laughter, no running or playing--only the same lethargy and

weariness that pervaded the classroom.

The saddest part of that scene was its terrible

familiarity. In the 40 years that I have observed food

assistance programs, I have seen similar poverty in Asia and

Latin America. Conditions are nearly as bad in parts of

Russia and the Balkans. There are now an estimated 790

million chronically hungry people in the world, of whom 300

million are school-age or younger. Most of them live in

Africa and Asia.

We in the United States can do something about it. We can

emulate one of the most beneficial programs ever launched on

behalf of children--the U.S. school lunch program. For the

past 22 years--through legislation I cosponsored with former

senator Robert Dole--America has provided a nutritious meal

to almost any student who can't afford one; currently, about

27 million children are fed every day. By any reasonable

criteria, this program has been a smashing success. It

attracts children to school and keeps them there under

conditions in which they are able to learn and grow.

Why not provide a similar modest meal every day for every

needy child in the world? Could not such a program of health,

healing and hope be the centerpiece of the current U.N.

commitment to cut world hunger in half by the year 2015?

The U.N. World Food Program already has launched some

efforts in this direction. After considerable discussion with

some of the world's experts in nutrition and food

assistance, I have concluded that it would be both

practical and right for the United States, within the U.N.

framework, to take the lead in organizing a worldwide

school lunch program.

There is precedent for success in this approach. In 1961,

shortly after President John F. Kennedy named me the first

director of U.S. Food for Peace, I received a telephone call

from a dean at the University of Georgia. He told me that in

his judgment, the federal school lunch program had done more

to advance the development of the South than any other

federal program. He pointed out that malnourished children

seldom make good strudents--it's difficult to concentrate on

reading, writing and arithmetic when you are hungry. He

concluded: ``If I had to preserve one federal program above

all others, I would choose the school lunch program.'' And he

urged me to draw on its example in extending Food for Peace

help to our fellow humans abroad.

I soon found a place to experiment with the dean's

conviction--the poverty stricken Puno area of Peru. Puno had

an illiteracy rate of 90 percent--unsurprising, since nine

out of 10 students dropped out of school by the sixth grade.

Even those brief years of education were blighted by

malnutrition, lethargy and dulled minds.

With the cooperation of a remarkable priest, the Rev. John

McClellan of the Maryknoll Fathers, I launched a school lunch

program in Puno in October 1961. The United States made the

food available, and the Maryknoll Fathers--with the help of

local parents--prepared and served it. The government of

Prime Minister Pedro Beltran built kitchens and dining halls

and assisted with distribution. Forty-five Peace Corps

workers contributed to the effort.

We began by feeding 30,000 children. Within six months,

school attendance had increased 40 percent and academic

performance had improved by 50 percent. That kind of success

inspired expansion: By 1965, Peru was feeding more than 1

million schoolchildren a day.

And it wasn't just happening in Peru. Three years after the

first program was launched in Puno, Food for Peace was

providing 12 million children in Latin America with meals.

Today, with local governments carrying most of the cost, the

figure has more than doubled.

It is difficult to locate an informed person in Latin

America who doesn't sing the praises of the school lunch

program. Study after study shows that a higher percentage of

children attend school and remain through graduation when

lunch is provided. Academic performance improves. Children

are not only smarter but stronger.

And there is another benefit in an overcrowded world: As a

society's educational level rises--especially among girls--

the birthrate goes down. Education is the surest foundation

for responsible family planning.

Some may ask: Can the United States, even with the help of

other nations, afford all this? What will it cost American

taxpayers? These are legitimate questions, and they deserve

thoughtful answers.

Having studied a number of cost analyses, I believe that we

could launch a start-up program, providing lunches to

millions of hungry schoolchildren not now being fed, for

about $3 billion a year. This would expand some existing U.N.

and local programs, and would include a three-tiered price

system similar to the one in the United States: Depending on

what their families can afford, students pay all, part or

none of the cost of their meal. That $3 billion would be

provided in the same way as funding for most international

relief programs--with 25 percent paid by the United States,

and the rest by other donor nations.

In addition, I would recommend that the United Nations copy

another wonderfully successful American program--the

supplementary feeding program for pregnant and nursing women

and their children below the age of 5, known as WIC. It is in

these early years that a child is most likely to be scarred

and handicapped for life by malnutrition. I estimate that a

serious attempt at beginning a worldwide WIC program would

cost close to $1 billion a year, with the United States again

paying 25 percent.

For both programs, therefore, the initial cost to American

taxpayers would be about $1 billion a year. Over the

subsequent years, the programs would grow in scope--and

presumably in cost.

But the United States would benefit, too. First, since most

of the U.S. contribution would be in the form of agricultural

commodities, the market for cereal grain, dairy products and

livestock would be strengthened. Second, since U.S. law

requires that at least half of all foreign assistance must be

carried in American ships, our Merchant Marine would benefit

materially--as would the trucks and trains carrying the

commodities to ports for shipment.

Over the past year, I have talked with ranchers and farmers

in my home state, South Dakota, and in Montana who tell me

they can't hold on for more than another year or two

unless there is some relief from price-depressing

surpluses. Ironically, it is the efficiency and

productivity of American farmers, the best in the world,

that breeds the low prices now threatening to put them out

of business. It would be a happier irony if feeding hungry

children became the means of helping to save American

farmers, ranchers and dairymen.

Other farm surplus countries such as France, Canada and

Australia would experience similar benefits.

We now that the emergency demands of World Wars I and II

greatly stimulated the farm and industrial economies of the

United States. The cost of these gigantic wars was enormous--

vastly larger than what is proposed here for a war against

hunger. But they greatly enriched the American economy. We

could expect proportionate benefits from a school lunch

program.

More than half a century ago, I flew 35 missions as a

bomber pilot, operating from a base in Cerignola, Italy. I

never doubted the soundness of our cause in helping to smash

Hitler's terrible war machine. But I'm especially proud of my

final mission: At the end of the war, we filled our bombers

with unused military rations and flew them to the devastated

cities of Europe. I will never forget the grateful people,

some of them our recent enemies, waiting eagerly to receive

and distribute the boxes of surplus food. I imagined some of

these same people taking cover from our bombs only a short

time earlier, now looking into the skies for hope and

deliverance.

That postwar food delivery was practical: There would have

been no point in hauling unused C-rations back to the United

States. It was effective: We fed people who might have

starved, and we began the process of rebuilding war-torn

Europe. Most of all, it was the right thing to do.

For the same reasons, we should enlist today in the effort

to provide a daily meal to every needy student around the

world. Having returned to Italy after so many years, I

believe that my mission again is practical: Americans produce

more food than we can eat or profitably sell. It can be

effective: There is no more useful task in the modern world

than feeding the children on whom its future depends. And it

is the right thing to do.

George McGovern is the U.S. ambassador to the United

Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. His book,

``Ending World Hunger in Our Time,'' will be published this

fall by Simon & Schuster.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of this legislation, and I urge all of my colleagues to do so as well.

More than 150 million poor children stumble to school every day because their stomachs are empty and their eyes are blurry from hunger. Oftentimes what separates these kids from academic achievement is as simple as a full, healthy meal.

Mr. Speaker, it is gratifying to note that our good friend and colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) has strived to ensure that our collective attention remains on these struggling, impoverished children.

The George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food For Education and Child Nutrition Program is one of the great success stories in our foreign aid framework. The McGovern-Dole International Food For Education and Child Nutrition Program is properly named after Ambassador and former Senator George McGovern and former Senator Bob Dole. Both of these highly respected statesmen worked tirelessly on world hunger issues for many years, culminating in the launching of a pilot program, the Global Food For Education Initiative in 2001.

The Global Food For Education Initiative was groundbreaking in that it systematically addressed the problem of young students with empty stomachs in developing countries. By distributing surplus agricultural commodities from our country to some 7 million hungry and malnourished children in 38 countries, the Global Food Initiative was largely responsible for improving school attendance rates, raising literacy rates, and fighting poverty, particularly among young girls, in the schools which received assistance under the program.

Mr. Speaker, the McGovern-Dole program is now permanent, but it alone cannot end world hunger; nor can it dramatically alter the performance of educational systems in developing countries. The program can, however, play a crucial role in helping our Nation meet its moral obligation to alleviate human suffering in places like sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South Asia while at the same time helping to support tens of thousands of American farm families. The McGovern-Dole program can also put spoons and textbooks into the hands of poor children in the most destitute corners of the globe so that these children will be less likely to grow up, take up arms, and fight over scarce resources.

Mr. Speaker, let me conclude by suggesting that the McGovern-Dole program epitomizes the true American spirit and the values which we hold so dear. Through this program, we are able to take the bounty of our land and share it with the needy and the hungry across the globe. At the same time we are able to help sustain family farms here at home. It is no wonder that the program enjoys such enormous support across the country.

I strongly support passage of this legislation, which our esteemed colleagues in the other Chamber have already passed. I urge all of my colleagues to do so as well.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the distinguished sponsor of this legislation.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who has been a fighter for children across the globe during her distinguished career here in this body.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis), who is always in the forefront of all humanitarian endeavors.

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation. I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 114) concerning the importance of the distribution of food in schools to hungry or malnourished children around the world.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the Senate concurrent resolution under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I

may consume and rise in strong support of S. Con. Res. 114, which is an expression of support for the McGovern-Dole International Food For Education Program. The companion House version of this resolution was introduced by the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts. By taking up the companion Senate version of the resolution, we will be able to complete congressional action on it.

300 million children around the world suffer from chronic hunger and malnourishment, and this program was founded on the premise that one of the most effective ways to combat child hunger could at the same time serve to increase literacy and to promote international stability. The program consists of a simple measure of supplying schools in areas suffering from food shortages with meals for their students. It has been shown that this measure, in addition to providing much-needed nourishment for hungry children, also results in a significant rise in attendance rates. This translates into higher literacy rates, job opportunities, and a healthier local economy as these children enter the workforce. These improvements, in turn, address several of the root causes of terrorism which is strongly linked to poverty and poor education.

Since its inception, the McGovern-Dole program has donated surplus agricultural commodities to the U.N. World Food Program, feeding nearly 7 million children from 38 countries. I urge the Congress to pass this concurrent resolution as an expression of support for this admirable endeavor. This resolution does not involve any allocation of funds, but does serve to recognize the accomplishments of the program, accomplishments again which have aided some 7 million children with much-needed meals and have aided the world by promoting education and stability. We express our support. I hope that the membership will support it.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, S. Con. Res. 114, sponsored by my good friend and colleague from Massachusetts, Jim McGovern, calls to attention one of America's most important humanitarian missions-- alleviating the suffering of the world's starving children. Hunger claims more lives worldwide than HIV and AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined; a tragedy.

Critical to feeding starving children is the McGovern-Dole International Food and Education and Child Nutrition Program, which provides hungry children around the world at least one nutritious meal each day in a school setting. This program has proven effective at reducing child hunger, increasing academic attendance and performance, and strengthening community commitment to education.

The McGovern-Dole program currently feeds two million children a year. That's two million children who will attend school. Two million children who will not have to suffer through an afternoon of stomach pain from too little nutrition. Two million children who will grow up knowing that America cares, that America is willing to help those most in need. Today, more than ever, it is vital that individuals living in impoverish areas across the world look to the United States as an ally, and more than that, a partner.

For these reasons, I am encouraged to see that the Agriculture Appropriations bill for the upcoming fiscal year, that the House overwhelmingly passed yesterday, included a $25 million increase for the McGovern-Dole program. Chairman Henry Bonilla of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, of which I am a member, demonstrated his compassion for the world's malnourished children by supporting the President's proposed increase for this program. This increase will make a significant difference.

This resolution is right on target: A humanitarian crisis exists in the world and the McGovern-Dole program is part of the solution. I urge my colleagues to support this meaningful resolution.