The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SCHOOL NUTRITION PROGRAMS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3126 on March 14, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SCHOOL NUTRITION PROGRAMS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Chabot] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Speaker, last week President Clinton visited Patrick Henry Elementary School in Alexandria, VA, to have a bite to eat. He dined on federally subsidized beef tacos and coleslaw and corn and fruit. The point of his visit was to try to convince the American people that the Personal Responsibility Act would slash the money that funds the current school lunch programs. Frankly, that is a lot of suckatash.
The President and those who oppose welfare reform are not telling the truth to the American people. The Personal Responsibility Act would direct that money to go where it is most needed, away from the Washington bureaucrats and toward low income children. The idea is to help those who have the greatest need.
I apologize for injecting real facts into this otherwise lively debate, but let us look at the numbers. In 1994, the Federal appropriation for the school lunch program was $4.3 billion. The Personal Responsibility Act would allocate block grants to the States of $6.7 billion next year, rising to $7.8 billion in the year 2000.
So funding for school lunch programs will increase by 4.5 percent each year over the next 5 years. Let me repeat that again. School lunch programs will increase by 4.5 percent each year. Now, people can argue about whether that is good or bad public policy, but, please, do not mislead the public by calling it a cut.
There has never been a time during this debate when those of us who favor welfare reform have voted for decreasing spending for school lunch programs. Our intent is to better serve children, not the Washington bureaucrats.
How does this bill work? We will transfer power away from the Federal food bureaucrats in Washington and give more authority to the States where it belongs. At the same time, we will focus the program more efficiently to ensure that at least 80 percent of the money goes to children from low income families.
States will have the flexibility to use the grant funds to support what they find to be the best programs for their individual school districts. They can decide how to meet the needs of children and
families in their areas. This plan makes school nutrition programs easier to operate and more cost-effective by reducing paperwork. It caps administrative costs at 2 percent, and it helps ensure that meals are appealing to children by allowing greater choice at the regional and local level. We are not cutting funds for our children; we are eliminating the Federal bureaucrat as the middleman.
Federally funded beef tacos may be what we have become accustomed to, but the diet we have become accustomed to here in Washington is not necessarily healthy for the American people. The States should have the opportunity to see if they can feed more children more efficiently with more money. That is what we propose to do.
Frankly, as a parent myself, it makes a lot more sense to me for someone to be able to talk directly with his or her local school board about school lunches than it does to have to speak to the Agriculture Department or Committee on Agriculture here in Washington. It is not as through Federal overmanagement makes beef tacos, coleslaw, corn and fruit taste better.
I hope that those who are so wedded to the present system finally will begin to tell the truth to the American people. The debate becomes clearer when it is understood all the distortions and false accusations are coming from people who understand that we are not proposing state school lunch cuts, but they want to avoid the real cuts other unrelated programs later on.
But opponents want to preserve the country's huge welfare state, so they launch this fear attack now as a preemptive strike. Well, my view is while we need nutritious lunches in our schools, we need a whole lot less baloney here in Washington.
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