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“NUTRITION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1026 on Feb. 1, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
NUTRITION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Gene Green, is recognized for 5 minutes.
(Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, today the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities held a hearing on the Contract With America, which deals with our nutrition programs. And a representative of the American School Food Service Association testified that if the Personal Responsibility Act were enacted as currently written, 40,000 out of the 93,000 school districts in the United States would stop serving school meals. That is breakfast and lunches for early--for children who get to school earlier. This, as we recall, was a bill that passed in 1946, in recognizing that children needed to have a lunch program and a breakfast program to make them ready for school.
During World War II we found a lot of our children were not up to the nutrition standards that we needed. So that is why 1946, this program started. The reasoning behind the dramatic elimination of those school meals programs is cost. And yet we are literally cutting off our nose to spite our face.
During this hearing today, ``the local perspective,'' five of the six witnesses presented were community nutrition providers. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that this bill, if we pass it, would cost the state of Texas $15.1 billion in 1996 alone, representing a 30-percent cut in funding. Of all the States in the Nation, the State of Texas would be the one that would be cut the most. And the reason is, and I have an objective summary of that report that shows that that 1.1 billion would be cut because the State of Texas utilizes more food stamps than most other States. And yet in California, that would benefit to the tune of about $600 million under this proposal, $650 million to be exact, would benefit because they have a higher payment. They actually have less food stamp participation and yet they pay $593 per month on the average in food stamp households in AFDC, whereas in the State of Texas we only pay $174. So we are actually hurting the poorest of the poor by taking away that billion dollars from the poor in the State of Texas.
The formula punishes those States which depend on food stamps the most.
This not only covers nutrition sites in our schools, the breakfast program, and the lunch program. But it covers the senior program Meals on Wheels. In Harris County, we received $1.5 million in 1994. This
roughly represented over a million hot meals for seniors. If we pass this bill, the cuts by the Personal Responsibility Act would mean 300,000 a year or 800 meals a day in Harris County alone would not be served.
Lowering the number of Meals on Wheels could add to the health cost of these seniors. By taking away the meals from the seniors, we would push them to more likely seek assistance in elderly care centers and thereby possibly even raising our hospital costs so more seniors would be taking advantage of Medicare.
These senior citizen centers provide more than just a hot meal at lunch. They provide also companionship. I have as many as 35 in my own district that I visit, when we can get home on Fridays and Mondays, although this first hundred days we have not had much opportunity to do that, but staff who visit these centers make sure. In our district office we offer Social Security assistance and Medicare assistance and other assistance. But those seniors who go to those centers oftentimes have no one at home and that is the only hot meal that day.
Yet if we pass this proposal in the Contract With America or Contract on American, then we are going to cut these senior citizens from these hot meals, not just in Harris County or the State of Texas but throughout the country.
Another proposal that would be cut would be the Women, Infants and Children. Again using my frame of reference, in Houston and Harris County, the city of Houston is the one that actually funds it or provides it with the funding from the Federal Government. This amount of funding would represent in Harris County, Texas $13 million cut to the local grocers in Houston who benefit from the Women, Infants and Children Program.
The WIC Program, as we call it, is not an entitlement program. The program participants not only have financial needs but also nutritional needs. This helps with early childhood development. Those children, before they become eligible for public school, we can make sure of the nutrition that they need in their early years until they do get to public school.
Health costs could increase for these children from Medicaid and also provide it for our hospital districts, for example, our public hospital systems.
In a 1969 White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health, President Nixon said of the Federal responsibility for nutrition programs, ``a child ill-fed is dull in curiosity, lower in stamina and distracted from learning.''
We do not need to make these cuts in our programs.
{time} 1820
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Dreier] is recognized for 5 minutes.
[Mr. DREIER addressed the House. His remarks will appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.]
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