Expressing support for designation of October as "National Farm to School Month".

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to S. 3307, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The American people have spoken, and they continue to speak loud and clear. I have been listening, and I know what I have been hearing in the Second District of Minnesota is being repeated from coast to coast: Stop growing government. The people are telling us, Stop spending money we do not have. It's a simple request and a sensible one, yet it continues to be ignored.

Today's vote will be among our final acts as we move through the few remaining days of the 111th Congress. As we cast those votes, we have a choice to make. Will we continue spending more and increasing the role of government in Americans' lives, or will we listen to the people and begin to step on the brakes?

Each of us must make that choice as we cast our votes on the bill before us. Everyone recognizes the importance of extending child nutrition programs, but extending these programs does not mean expanding them. We could extend these programs and improve them with no added cost to taxpayers. We could listen to our constituents and do right by our children.

In fact, my Republican colleagues and I tried to do precisely that, but the Democrats on the Rules Committee denied us the opportunity to offer such an option on the floor today. Instead, this bill spends another $4.5 billion on various programs and initiatives and creates or expands 17 separate Federal programs. It imposes a tax on the middle class by empowering the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to require schools to increase--that's right--require schools to increase the price they charge families for school meals.

This is a dangerous foray into Federal price controls, and it's one of many concerns outlined by the National Governors Association and leading school groups. In fact, the school leaders who would be responsible for implementing these new requirements have urged us to vote ``no'' on S. 3307 because of its higher cost for local districts and its rigid mandates.

Earlier this month, the American Association of School Administrators, the Council of the Great City Schools, and the National School Boards Association told us, ``All of the national organizations representing the Nation's public school districts do not support the Senate version of the Child Nutrition reauthorization bill pending before the House.'' This is a strong statement that should leave every Member questioning the wisdom of imposing these added costs and mandates on our school systems.

In fact, the cost of this proposal has been a sticking point throughout the process. The majority claims this bill is paid for. They want us to believe we can grow government with no cost or consequences. But the American people know that's just not true. More spending is more spending whether or not those dollars are offset elsewhere in the massive Federal budget. But one offset in this bill is particularly questionable.

The truth is, at least some portion of the billions the new program costs is deficit spending. This money was borrowed from our children and grandchildren in 2009 when it was put in the stimulus; that borrowed money is simply being redirected today. It was borrowed then; it is borrowed now.

This bill, with its so so-called pay-for, is merely a stalling tactic. It obscures government expansion in the short term so this bill can become law and its spending can become permanent. So here we stand, playing a shell game with the Federal budget and hoping the American people do not notice that government continues to grow, spending continues to expand, and our children continue to fall deeper and deeper into debt.

Mr. Speaker, I support extending and improving child nutrition programs. I believe we can do so in a bipartisan way, but that opportunity is lost with this bill, and so I must oppose it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume here to address this issue of a floor on school lunch prices that can be imposed. I have got a couple of quotes here I would like to read. One is from the bill and one is from the letter from the Governors Association where there's a paragraph that says, ``Federally mandated paid meal price. The bill would establish a Federal mandate for every paid meal in every school in the country for the first time ever. Governors join with the school community to strongly oppose this Federal mandate. The provision will dramatically destabilize fair market pricing of school meals'' and so forth.

And they get that from the language of the bill itself. In section 205, it says: ``Lower price, in general, in the case of a school food authority that established a price for a paid lunch in the previous school year that was less than the difference between the total Federal reimbursement for a free lunch and the total Federal reimbursement for a paid lunch, the school food authority shall establish an average price for a paid lunch that is not less than the price charged in the previous school year.''

So the Federal Government is coming in and saying, you can't charge any less; you cannot lower the price of your paid school lunch unless its meets our requirements. It is, in fact, saying that you can't lower the price of food even if you would like to do so. It doesn't meet this requirement.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Broun.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

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

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from east Tennessee, Dr. Roe.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining on both sides.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes just to address an issue that we have talked about a number of times.

Both sides have referred to organizations that support or oppose this legislation. For a moment, I just want to go to a letter that has been referred to from the American Association of School Administrators, the Council of the Great City Schools, and the National School Boards Association. They represent the State and local officials who actually have to implement this law that we are preparing to pass here in Congress. There are just a couple of excerpts from the letter which I will quote:

``The bill adds multiple new requirements while failing to reimburse these additional costs.''

``School districts continue to financially subsidize the Federal meals program at the expense of our primary responsibility, our students' educational program.''

``The numerous new requirements in S. 3307 will exacerbate these operational concerns and drive school districts' budgets further in the hole. Notably, none of the interest groups or celebrities promoting this bill bear the governmental and legal responsibility of school district officials to deliver services with an annual balanced budget,'' and so forth.

This bill will drive up costs and complexities for school districts, and that is not the direction in which we should be going.

American Association of School Administrators; Council of

the Great City Schools; National School Board

Association,

November 15, 2010.

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative: All of the national organizations

representing the nation's public school districts do not

support the Senate version of the Child Nutrition

reauthorization bill (S. 3307) pending before the House. The

bill does not provide sufficient resources to cover the local

cost of providing the federal free and reduced-priced lunches

and breakfasts. Moreover, the bill adds multiple new

requirements while failing to reimburse these additional

costs. The Senate bill is actually less supportable than the

House version of the child nutrition bill. As a result, the

nation's school administrators, school boards, and big city

school districts recommend passing a simple extension of

current law.

School districts recognize the importance of providing

healthy meals and snack options for school children, and

support updating the nutritional standards for the National

School Lunch and Breakfast Programs. But, school districts

continue to financially subsidize the federal meals program

at the expense of our primary responsibility, our students'

educational program.

U.S. Department of Agriculture studies document that school

districts' cost of providing free lunches exceeds the federal

reimbursement by over thirty cents per meal, or an annual

cost of $54,000 for school districts serving 1,000 students

daily--the equivalent cost of retaining a teacher. In high

cost areas, the un-reimbursed cost can be significantly more.

The numerous new requirements in S. 3307 will exacerbate

these operational concerns, and drive school districts'

budgets further in the hole. Notably, none of the interest

groups or celebrities promoting this bill bears the

governmental and legal responsibility of school district

officials to deliver services with an annual balanced budget.

School districts simply request that Congress pay for the

costs of the federal free and reduced priced school meals,

and refrain from imposing new federal requirements

particularly in this economic environment. Much attention has

been directed to the use of food stamp funds (SNAP) to pay

for or offset the cost of the Senate's Child Nutrition bill.

Unfortunately, little attention has been focused on the drain

of local school district funds to pay for or offset the

continuing un-funded costs of the federal free and reduced-

priced school meals. We, therefore, recommend a ``no'' vote

on S. 3307 and passage of a simple extension of the current

programs.

Sincerely,

Noelle Ellerson,

American Association of School Administrators.

Jeff Simering,

Council of the Great City Schools.

Lucy Gettman,

National School Boards Association.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

The speakers on my side of the aisle have expressed concern, as indeed I did, about the pay-for here. This bill proposes to take money from the SNAP program to pay for this, and we have expressed some concern that this is something of a shell game for two reasons. One, it's borrowed money, and if we really want to do some positive things for our children, we should look at not adding billions and trillions more to the debt that they're going to have to pay. But we've had speaker after speaker on the other side of the aisle come down and say things like, The President has assured me that we're not going to actually spend this money or that they're going to work tirelessly to make sure that this pay-for is not in fact the pay-for. So I think the debate has confirmed our suspicion that in fact the promised pay-for is really not there.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah, a member of the committee, Mr. Bishop.

I continue to reserve my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, the argument that we have been making in the debate today is that this really isn't about dietary guidelines or even school nutrition strategies. The point was made there are a lot of people caring, from local school boards to Members of Congress and certainly the First Lady. It's not a debate about keeping our children healthy and active. We all want to see our children healthy and active. This is a debate about spending and the role of government and the size of government, a debate about whether we're listening to our constituents or not.

Reauthorizing child nutrition should be easy. We should be able to extend these programs and approve them. We should be able to do that without adding to the cost. I'm confident Members on both sides of the aisle would welcome the opportunity to do just that at no new cost to taxpayers. Unfortunately, that option is not on the table today.

Instead, we are voting on yet another bill that calls for the government to grow, expand, to spend more and intrude more, and I am arguing that this bill is in fact not paid for. It's an argument that I made minutes ago.

I would quote from an article, the newspaper yesterday, I think Congress Daily. It says: ``Antihunger advocates opposed House consideration of the bill before the election because part of the offset for the bill is a cut in future food stamp benefits. But the Food Research and Action Center said last week that its member groups would support the bill as long as Congress and the Obama administration plan to restore the food stamp cut in future legislation.''

We don't know where the pay-for is going to come from. We've got something on paper that says it's going to come out of food stamps, which was money borrowed in the stimulus bill, and yet we really don't know where that's coming from.

So, Madam Speaker, I am arguing that this bill is not what the people want. They want our children to be healthy and active, but they do not want to see government grow. They do not want to see the creation or expansion of 17 new programs. They do not want to see $4.5 billion of new spending. This is not what the people want. It's not what they can afford. This is not a bill I can support. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1742, I call up the bill (S. 3307) to reauthorize child nutrition programs, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise for our Nation's children, for the poorest children in our country who are hungry and malnourished. I rise because children need our help. Child nutrition is not a political issue. It's not a partisan issue. It's a question of what's a moral thing to do for our children. It's about being on the right side of history and ensuring a healthy and productive future for our country. Our children will make and determine our future, and that is what is at stake.

In a country as great as ours, no child should go hungry, but, in fact, millions of children do go hungry at various times throughout the year and very often throughout the day. And the fact of the matter is we cannot afford to let that continue.

At the same time we are in the middle of this crisis of food insecurity, it's called, better known as hunger. We also face the public problem of obesity. And what we understand and what we know is that our schools, through the school nutrition programs and other programs that serve nutritional meals to children, are an opportunity to educate them about eating better, eating healthier. This legislation addresses those concerns because it provides the resources necessary so that we can improve the meal selection for our children in the various feeding programs.

It's very important for us because it also provides for increased transparency of the program, for increased efficiency of the program, for increased simplicity of the program both for parents who are enrolling their children, for school districts who are enrolling and accountable for those children and for those meals. Those combinations of accountability and transparency for healthier meals should be a goal and is the goal, in fact, of this Congress and of this Nation.

It also provides accountability within the legislation, and it also provides the means by which we can assure that we will have healthy foods during the school day for the children and in other educational settings and care settings for these children so that we can also address the problems of childhood obesity.

We have had hearings in our committee where we have had experts from various scientific organizations and health organizations, that we now have very young children presenting with adult diseases and illnesses. We spend some $140, $150 billion on the excess costs of obesity, much of which starts with children, with their diet.

That's what this legislation is really about, is making sure that we can, in fact, provide for a healthier school-age population, a smarter school-age population about the foods that they choose, a better meal program for them, and increased simplicity and transparency and accountability for those who administer the program.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. First of all, it's very clear in this legislation that it does not require school districts to raise any meal prices. In fact, in the best sense of local control, it lets school districts decide and determine how they will ensure that there's adequate revenue to support the paid meal program. We should not have the Federal taxpayers underwriting the support of meals for those who can afford it as is required by the law. This bill passed unanimously from the United States Senate. It passed unanimously because they knew that it is paid for.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a member of the committee.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York, Carolyn McCarthy, the subcommittee chair on this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the Speaker of the House, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews).

(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield 1 minute to the majority leader, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to a member of the committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt).

I yield 1 minute to a member of the committee, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Loebsack).

(Mr. LOEBSACK asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield 1 minute to a member of the committee, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Chu).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

(Mr. FARR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

The suggestion has been made by speakers on the other side that somehow this really isn't about a child nutrition bill, that somehow this isn't about child nutrition and the well-being of our schoolchildren.

The fact of the matter is that's what this bill is all about, and that's what this bill is directed to do. That's why it has received the support of the American Dental Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American Public Health Association, and the American School Health Association. These are the people who are intimately involved with the health of America's young children. These are the people who are with them in school settings. They see what happens when children don't have proper nutrition throughout the day, and they see the impact it has on their ability to learn, on their ability to focus, and on their ability to participate in class.

That's why this legislation is so important. That's why it has such broad support in the entire nutritional community, in the health care community, in the religious community, in the farm community, and in our urban communities, because they understand the importance of this to the well-being of these children and to the budget of our Nation when we have spent over $147 billion dealing with obesity and diabetes in our society, and we know that it starts, much of it, with a bad diet.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Barbara Lee, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman 30 additional seconds.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro and thank her publicly for all of her work on this legislation and on behalf of our children.

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Richardson).

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, Members of the House, first of all, I want to begin by thanking the staffs of the committee on both sides of the aisle. We may not agree on this bill, but we spent a lot of time in this committee on hearings and the presentation of facts and the marshaling of those facts and the drafting of legislation. We had an awful lot of cooperation across the aisle, and I want to thank everybody for that effort.

Specifically, on the majority side, I want to thank Gabrielle Serra, Kara Marchione, Kim Zarish Becknell, Ria Ruiz, Jose Garza, Betsy Kittredge Miller, Melissa Salmanowitz, Denise Forte, and Jody Calemine; and Brian Ronholm from Ms. DeLauro's staff; Keith Stern from Mr. McGovern's staff; and Erik Stallman from the Speaker's staff. All of these individuals were helpful in the negotiations not only here in the House and the presentation of this legislation, but monitoring and looking at what was happening in the Senate where this legislation that we're considering today was not only passed out of the Senate with unanimous consent, but it was also passed out of the committee with unanimous consent, where it was given full consideration, where the hearings were made and built the confidence of the members of that committee on both sides of the aisle and built the confidence obviously on both sides of the aisle in the Senate so that it could pass with unanimous consent.

And why has that happened? Because this legislation deals with and addresses in the most profound way the problem of hunger among our schoolchildren, among poor schoolchildren in this Nation.

But we also address the needs of the various institutions that are involved in delivering this nutrition to these children. And that is to the local school districts, to the local schools. And we have simplified the program. We have made it more efficient. We have taken away much of the redundant activity that they used to have to go through to check the same kid four times a day in four different settings. And we got rid of that to reduce the costs of the program. And we received bipartisan support for that effort.

We also made it safer. Up until this legislation was passed, in many instances schools are the last to know that a food recall has taken place, and that the recall may be taking place where the food for the schools is produced. But because they are not on the list, they are not in the protocols, the schoolchildren are put at risk, as we have seen in the recent recalls. So it's safer for those children, it's healthier for those children.

The 6-cent increase in the meal program is the first one in 30 years. And it's with the designed purpose to improve the quality of the meal program. I know these children. I have seen these children. I know them through the Diabetics Association. I know them through the programs on obesity. We have a very serious problem. And this is an effort, agreed to by the Pediatrics Association and others, that this is the way to attack it and to start to build a barrier against childhood obesity and adult-onset obesity. And we have got to change that diet. And that's where major, major savings in health care come from.

So this is a bill that has been thought out in its entirety. It's a bill that is respectful of local control. It's respectful of the needs of school settings and their particular situations. We tried to do that. We listened to school food administrators for districts across this country, all of whom had ideas for efficiencies and improvements. And many of those are ingrained in this legislation. So I would hope that my colleagues, when they would come to the floor later to vote on this bill, will vote for this legislation. They will understand it's fully paid for. They will understand that it received unanimous consent in both the committee in the Senate and on the Senate floor.

With that, I urge the passage of this legislation.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 3307.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to thank Chairman Miller and staff for working to move the reauthorization of this bill forward.

Mr. Speaker, this really is a historic bill; and while not perfect, it is nonetheless a vast improvement over the status quo. As was mentioned already a number of times, it passed unanimously in the Senate.

I am pleased that this legislation includes provisions from legislation that I introduced to ensure that over 110,000 more children receive school meals and are automatically enrolled for those meals, saving parents and schools time and money and cutting red tape, while also ensuring that our Nation's children are, in fact, getting adequate nutrition.

It also includes provisions that will improve the quality and healthfulness of school food products and processing, and it will give schools a new option to provide universal free meals.

This bill also makes a strong commitment to healthy foods through the Farm to School program, as was just mentioned, and it provides the first increase in the meal reimbursement rate in over 30 years.

I urge support for this legislation, not only for our children's current health, but for their future health as adults as well. I urge the passage of this legislation.

I want to first thank Chairman Miller and Chairwoman Lincoln and their staff for working to pass this bill and moving child nutrition reauthorization forward. This is a historic bill, and while not perfect, is a vast improvement over the status quo.

I am pleased that a number of provisions from legislation I introduced are included in this legislation. I was happy to introduce in the House, along with Chairwoman Lincoln in the Senate, the Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act, which is included in this bill.

I am also pleased that this bill includes a number of provisions from the Hunger Free Schools Act I introduced in the House and Senator Brown introduced in the Senate.

The primary goals of the Hunger Free Schools Act are to increase access to the school meals programs, enhance children's learning, support a robust farm and food economy, and also lessen the administrative cost and burden on our schools.

Even in this day and age, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that in 2009, over 450,000 families with children had one or more children who did not get enough to eat. In my eyes, this is simply unacceptable in the wealthiest and most advanced nation on earth.

I truly believe this legislation takes major steps to address these issues in the place where our children learn and grow. In order to prepare our children to compete in an increasingly global economy, we must make childhood nutrition a priority. By automatically enrolling low-income children for free school meals to ensure that no hungry child misses out on critical nutrition, we are taking important steps to address these issues.

That is also why, in the Hunger Free School Act, we included provisions to make it easier for high-poverty schools to offer free meals to all students through community eligibility and to make it easier for low-income students to get free meals no matter where they attend school.

The legislation before us today includes a number of these provisions from the Hunger Free Schools Act. I would like to share some specifics about what S. 3307 will do with respect to community eligibility and automatic enrollment.

This legislation includes new options designed to make it much easier for high-poverty schools and districts to focus their efforts on educating children rather than administrative burdens and paperwork. The new options, which are known as community eligibility options, draw on reliable data to replace paper applications, significantly reducing administrative hassles and even costs for families and for schools.

Schools that participate in community eligibility options would serve all meals free of charge to students in exchange for the simplifications of not having to process applications or track eligibility in the cafeteria. We have to make sure, however, that we don't replace one bureaucratic process that plagues schools with another process of complicated formulas and reimbursement rates.

The community eligibility provision included in this bill is targeted at the poorest schools in America. The goal is that these schools are able to serve all kids free meals so that no low-income child feels a stigma for needing these meals, they all get the meals they need to learn, and we help streamline the operation of the meal program.

This should allow schools to spend time on teaching and improving school meals rather than paperwork. While implementing the community eligibility portion of this legislation after it is signed into law, USDA should work to make it as easy as possible for schools to participate and should avoid unnecessary barriers or complexities. We need to focus on the goal of getting high-poverty schools to participate to make progress on reducing hunger.

Another important provision included in S. 3307 I was happy to work on is an expansion of automatic enrollment and direct certification. The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 phased in a requirement that schools automatically enroll children in households receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program) for free school meals so that families that have already sought help and provided detailed information will not have to go through a duplicative application process, thereby saving school districts time and money.

Obviously the goal was to have every school district automatically enrolling every one of those children. For a number of reasons, states miss nearly three in ten children who could benefit from automatic enrollment and some states miss half the children who could benefit. While we have not yet achieved the goal of automatically enrolling every child, schools have made good progress and this legislation will put in place incentives for further progress.

S. 3307 will put in place performance standards beginning with reaching 80 percent of children eligible for automatic enrollment based on SNAP data and increasing to 95 percent. States that have trouble meeting this standard will develop improvement plans and states that perform especially well or show dramatic improvement will receive performance bonuses. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that an average of 4,500 low-income children will receive free school meals for the first time as a result of these changes.

While not as strong as provisions I included in the Hunger Free Schools Act, S. 3307 will importantly launch a demonstration project to expand direct certification through the use of Medicaid data for automatic enrollment for free school meals. Due to the funding situation we are faced with, the demonstration project focuses on the use of Medicaid data by selected school districts around the country. CBO estimates that 115,000 children each year will receive free school meals for the first time as a result of this demonstration project and many more who are already receiving free meals will be automatically enrolled for the first time by using the new Medicaid data.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, due to funding constraints, there are millions more children who are eligible for free school meals and receive Medicaid, but who will not benefit from this expansion of direct certification. Fortunately, the USDA can do a great deal to reach them within the Department. I urge USDA to use its standing authority to conduct additional demonstration projects to explore the use of Medicaid data to enroll low-income children for free school meals.

Granted, the use of Medicaid data for direct certification is more complicated than SNAP data because states may set income limits for children receiving Medicaid that are higher than the income limits that apply to free meals offered through the school meals programs. To take Department-level steps to remedy this situation, USDA could study an array of different approaches to using Medicaid data for school meals enrollment, including statewide approaches.

Alongside my enthusiasm for these provisions, however, is concern that this bill is partly funded by reducing future SNAP benefits that were increased above normal levels as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As we all know, SNAP benefits stave off hunger for millions of low-income families, including many of the same families and children we try to help through the child nutrition programs.

I am pleased the Administration has stated their intention to work toward the restoration of this SNAP funding in the future and their intention to take additional steps to make improvements on a Department-level to the child nutrition programs. I hope USDA will look at provisions in the Hunger Free Schools Act for some ideas on potential improvements.

Despite the issue with SNAP benefits, this bill provides numerous benefits for children and schools and is truly a historic commitment to child nutrition. The bill also makes a strong commitment to healthy foods through the Farm to School program and provides the first increase in the meal reimbursement rate in over 30 years. The provisions of the Hunger Free Schools Act that are included will make important strides to modernize the school meals program and make it easier for low-income children to get the school meals they need, while providing a base upon which USDA may build.

By the time we begin work on the next child nutrition reauthorization, I hope these provisions I have discussed will have ensured that schools sewing low-income children are providing free meals to all students using community eligibility options, every student in a household receiving SNAP benefits are automatically enrolled for free school meals, and thousands more children are directly certified through Medicaid data.

Most importantly, I hope children will be healthier, will have a better learning environment, and that our child nutrition programs will be fulfilling our commitment to ending childhood hunger.

I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, this important bill will increase the number of children enrolled in school meals programs, and it will provide more meals for at-risk children nationwide; it will improve the quality of school meals; it removes junk food from the schools; it provides nutrition and wellness for the students, and it increases the reimbursement rate for schools. This is too important to delay another day.

I want to thank Chairman Miller for including in the bill language that I wrote on Farm to School improvements, which will provide tens of millions of dollars in mandatory funding for fresh vegetables.

Now, since I come from New Jersey, it may not be a surprise that I support bringing Jersey tomatoes and sweet corn into the schools, but this has real nutritional benefits and educational benefits as well as improving the economics of local farmers. Of course, it will also help, as we've heard, fight childhood obesity.

It is important to point out--and I must emphasize this to my colleague who just spoke--that this is paid for fully by cuts in other programs, and I pledge to restore any funds borrowed from future years of food stamp funding to cover this.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (S. 3307), which will reauthorize important child nutrition programs and raise the nutritional standards for food served to our school children in a variety of ways.

The number of obese children in the United States has tripled in the last 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that as of 2008 almost 32 percent of our children were either overweight or obese. Obesity leaves children at risk of developing adult diseases such as hypertension and Type-2 diabetes, and at increased risk of developing heart disease and suffering from strokes and cancer. A study by Mission: Readiness, an organization of retired senior military

leaders, found that more than 9 million young adults are too overweight to join the Armed Services.

In a strange paradox, while childhood obesity has reached epidemic levels in the United States, so too has childhood hunger. As of 2008, more than 49 million people in the United States were living in food insecure households, and more than 16 million of those were children. That's more than 22 percent of all children living in America. Making matters worse, more than 17 million people were living in households that were considered to have ``very low food security,'' a USDA term meaning one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. In 2008, the number of people suffering from ``very low food security'' was double the number in that category in 2000.

We are long overdue in taking decisive action to combat these problems, and I am pleased that we are taking an important step today. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act includes many provisions to combat childhood hunger. The bill increases the number of children funded in the school meal program by using existing data to directly certify eligible children. In addition, it provides funds to states to establish and expand school breakfast programs in communities with high levels of children living in poverty. It would also expand the availability of summer food service programs so more children have access to nutritious meals year round. To help reduce hunger outside of school, the bill would allow Child and Adult Care Food Program providers nationwide to be reimbursed for providing a meal to at-risk children after school. Altogether, the hunger-prevention provisions in the bill would provide more than 21 million additional meals to at-risk children.

The legislation would also combat obesity by making the food served at school healthier and more nutritious. It requires that all food served at school meet updated standards that reflect recommendations made by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, This will finally remove junk food from schools and ensure that the only meal some children get each day is nutritious. Further, the legislation increases the reimbursement rate for schools that comply with these new nutrition standards. This represents the first increase in reimbursement rates in 30 years. The bill also requires schools participating in the school lunch program to offer drinking water in the location where meals are served, while they are being served, and to establish school wellness policies.

I am particularly pleased that my legislation, the Farm to School Improvements Act, is included in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The farm to school provisions in the bill establish a program through which schools, agricultural producers, nonprofit organizations, agencies and Indian Tribes can obtain competitive matching grants to increase the use of locally-supplied foods in schools participating in the school lunch or breakfast programs. Priority in awarding the grants goes to projects that, among other things, make local food products available on the school menu, serve a high proportion of children who are eligible for free or reduced price lunches, and incorporate experiential nutrition education activities such as farming and growing school gardens in curriculum planning. The bill provides $40 million in mandatory finding over 8 years to support farm to school programs.

When he testified in July at the hearing on this legislation in the House Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said that we cannot ``delay the connection between the farm and school.'' It is a crucial link between children and their food supply. Similarly, Beth Feehan, Director of the New Jersey Farm to School Network said ``[w]e can't be penny wise and a pound foolish with this one. What we feed children will determine their health as adults-- how well they learn and perform in all areas of their lives. . . . When our military states that [it] cannot command enough recruits due to the increase in obesity in the eligible population who can serve, it is time to take a serious look at what we are feeding children and make improvements now.'' I am pleased that we are doing that today.

In these challenging fiscal times, every dollar we spend must not only meet immediate needs but also make lasting improvements for the future. Because school food programs currently provide more than half of the daily nutrition for many children, it is vital that these meals be healthy ones. Farm to school programs increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables to improve our children's daily nutrition and can lead to permanent improvements in their diets and eating habits.

Farm to School programs also benefit small- and mid-sized agricultural producers by providing access to consistent markets, making them a great stimulus for the local economy. Currently, 10,000 farm to school programs exist, but there are 94,000 public and nonprofit private schools operating school lunch programs that could offer one.

I would like to take a moment to thank Megan Lott of the Community Food Security Coalition, Beth Feehan, the Director of the New Jersey Farm to School Network, and Gabrielle Serra of the House Committee on Education and Labor for helping to make this program a reality.

I was delighted when the House recognized the critical importance of farm-to-school programs by passing my House Resolution 1655 in November, to establish October as National Farm to School Month. Today, I am pleased to support the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I thank the chairman for yielding. I want to congratulate the chairman, as the Speaker did, for a lifetime of dedication to children, to education, and to health care. He has been a giant in all three of those activities and, in fact, understands the relationship between all those activities.

I also want to thank the ranking member for his work. I know that he's not for this bill, so we have a difference there; but I do not believe, as the previous speaker said on his side of the aisle, that he's not also for making sure that children have the proper nutrition and grow up healthy. We have a different perspective on how to get there.

The Centers for Disease Control tell us that over the past three decades childhood obesity rates have tripled. Nearly one out of every five American children between the ages of 6 and 19 is obese. That is a national crisis. That is a national security crisis. That is a crisis that we owe morally, ethically, fiscally, and as a national policy to address. That doesn't just mean a lifetime of health problems for those children. It means a public health crisis that we all pay for.

One of my favorite phrases is, Life is a series of alternatives, series of choices, but they're not free choices. Ted Agnew was elected Governor of the State of Maryland at the same time I was elected to the Maryland State Senate, and he gave a speech on the east front of the capitol of our State in Annapolis. One of the phrases in that speech has stuck with me since January of 1967. He said, The cost of failure far exceeds the price of progress. I want you to think about that: the cost of failure far exceeds the cost of progress.

The cost of unhealthy children is far greater than keeping those children healthy, to facilitating their not only nutritional but health needs. We pay for the failure to do so in the billions of dollars in health care costs each year, and we even pay for it in military readiness, with at least 9 million young adults, think about it, 9 million young adults in America who are too overweight to serve in our Armed Forces, nine million, according to a coalition of retired senior military leaders.

So, again, a health issue but a national security issue as well.

We can't reverse the obesity epidemic or solve child hunger overnight. We recognize that. But we can take an important step towards getting our

children healthier food by passing this particular piece of legislation.

And as has been pointed out time after time, this bill was passed unanimously in the other body. That means that this is not a partisan bill. This is not a bill on which there was great disagreement, and we know in the United States Senate there are people who are very concerned about the budget deficit, very concerned about growth of government, very concerned about many of the things that were expressed on this floor. They unanimously said this is a priority for our country and we're going to pass it.

This legislation takes important steps to increase access to school meal programs, improve the standards of the food provided and sold to our children, and strengthen accountability to produce healthier results for our children.

Among the bill's most important provisions, it increases reimbursements for school meal programs so that the food offered can meet today's health standards, not outdated standards. We've learned a lot in the last 15 to 20 years. We understand better what creates healthy children, is helpful or is not, food that may taste good but leads to obesity.

Now, we all have the opportunity to purchase that. I'm a big McDonald's eater myself. I understand that luckily whatever metabolism I have seems to work with respect to my ingesting all of those McDonald's hamburgers and french fries. I love them and I don't want to be told I can't have them. But I do know this: I have a great- granddaughter who's 4 years of age. She's going to be in school pretty soon. I want to make sure the food she gets in school, whether she buys it or it's provided for her because she can't afford it--luckily our family will be able to afford it--is food that will enhance her health, her well-being, her growth, her intellectual abilities because she will feel well.

This is a critically important piece of legislation that so many Members of the Senate and the House have worked so hard on. The bill also helps schools create and expand breakfast programs because nutritious breakfasts have been shown to correlate strongly with improved academic outcomes.

George Bush I was a big proponent of Head Start. One of the reasons he was a big supporter of Head Start is because he thought it worked. He thought it worked to make sure that young people have opportunities. One of those, of course, is having a breakfast so that when they're in a classroom they're not agonized about hunger. They're focused on learning.

When families face food insecurity and when schools do too little to pick up the slack, we are condemning children to higher chances of poor performance in school and poor health throughout life. This bill will also provide grants and outreach to increase participation in summer food service programs so that children can eat healthier food year- round.

I learned about the importance of those programs firsthand. I'm sure many of you have done the same on both sides of the aisle. You have visited programs in your communities that provide children with healthy meals. I was in La Plata, Maryland, a few months ago, and I saw the direct benefit to those children of the program that was available to them there.

Finally, this bill would continue school districts' role in creating local nutrition and physical activity programs, but it will also ensure follow-up to see these programs are implemented and that they meet their goals.

The health of our children has a distinct and direct impact on all of us, and all of us care about that. It's not a partisan issue. Every Republican, every Democrat cares about the health of our children. But caring is not enough. We need to act as well. Saying that we care, as the Bible tells, faith without works is dead. It's nice to say you have faith, but if you don't follow that with action, that's somewhat empty.

This is an opportunity to act. This is an opportunity to not only say that we care about children and their health and their nutrition and their welfare but it is an opportunity to act and make it so. Let us do that.

I congratulate all of those who have worked so hard to bring this bill to the floor, and I urge its adoption.