The House Education Committee approved a child nutrition bill to slash a program allowing free meals for students at schools in poor neighborhoods and to start a three-state test of block-grants for school food — with a bloc of Tea Party Republicans saying broader change was needed. The bill, HR 5003, was viewed as a partisan attack on broadly popular programs with little chance to become law.
Consumer groups, anti-hunger advocates and school food directors opposed the bill because of the three-state block grant, which would remove most federal regulation over meals served in schools. The three-state pilot project “is the opening salvo in an aggressive, alarming attack on the future of school meals,” said president Jean Ronnei of the School Nutrition Association, which urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that re-affirms federal support for healthy meals at school.
The largest of the child nutrition programs, school lunch, was created in a 1946 law “as a measure of national security to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food.” The programs, which now include school breakfast and the Women, Infants and Children program, cost $23 billion a year. The House bill does not provide additional funding nor does a bipartisan child nutrition bill awaiting a Senate vote.
On party-line votes, Republicans easily defeated attempts by Democrats to delete the block grant pilot program and to keep intact the Community Eligibility Provision for schools in poor neighborhoods. The Republican majority splintered on Tea Party proposals; one for tougher standards on community eligibility and the other for repeal of the school lunch and school breakfast programs, to be replaced with a block grant.
“This whole program oozes with contempt for people at the state level,” said Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, who complained of over-regulation of school meals. “It (block grants) is what your school districts want.”
“You don’t really have a program at all” with block grants, said Bobby Scott of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee. There would be no standards for who is eligible for aid, what would go into a meal or how often meals would be available, he said. According to the bill, states would have to provide one “affordable” meal a day.
Nine of the 22 Republicans on the committee voted for Grothman’s proposal for immediate block-granting, although Education chairman John Kline counseled against over-hasty action. The amendment failed, 9-25, with opposition by Democrats and most Republicans. A similar line-up defeated, 8-25, the proposal for an even-higher threshold for community eligibility. David Brat of Virginia, who supported immediate block granting, was the only Republican to vote against the bill, which passed on a party-line vote of 20-14.
The conservative group Heritage Action told Politico that it worked with the Education Committee over the past several weeks to encourage “bold” action. “There’s certainly been chatter among conservatives that the draft didn’t go far enough,” said spokesman Dan Holler.
Robert Greenstein of the think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said the three-state pilot “is likely intended to be a foot in the door” and cited House passage, under Republican control, in 1995 of a bill to convert school meals into a block grant.
Under the bill, schools would need an “identified student population” (ISP) of 60 percent of enrollment to qualify for community eligibility, compared to the current 40 percent. The ISP counts students automatically eligible for free meals if they live in households receiving food stamps or welfare benefits or meet other gauges of financial stress. Because other families submit applications, the number of children in a school who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals is 1.5 or 1.6 times larger than the ISP.
Kline and subcommittee chairman Todd Rokita said the House bill makes modest and reasonable changes in the nutrition programs. Tighter rules on community eligibility provide the money — an estimated $300 million a year — for a 2-cent increase in reimbursements to schools for each breakfast they serve. The two leaders said that if the debate over the bill was partisan, it was not their fault. For example, Kline blamed the 2010 nutrition law “jammed through Congress in the final days of a Democratic majority” for driving up the cost of school meals and adding layers of regulation to the federally funded programs.
“I’m disappointed that House Republicans ignored nearly every group involved in child nutrition — from school food service directors, to parents and pediatricians, to more than 600 retired generals and admirals — to produce a bill that goes backwards on nutrition and food access for America’s children,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, senior Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee. “I hope House Republicans will reconsider this approach and work with us to pass a bipartisan bill that moves these critical programs forward.”