After warning against saddling small schools with big-city regulations, Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts said on Wednesday that Congress could act swiftly on the overdue renewal of child nutrition programs. The programs, headlined by school lunch and WIC, cost $30 billion a year. “There is a pathway for child nutrition programs to be reauthorized in a bipartisan manner yet this year,” said Roberts without elaboration at his committee’s first hearing on reauthorization.
The 2010 child nutrition law called for schools to use more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains in meals while cutting back on salt, fat, and sugar. Some school districts complained that the requirements were unduly costly, and Congress wrangled over them for years. The Trump administration issued rules last December that restored chocolate milk to school cafeterias, allowed the use of whole-grain-rich foods in many cases instead of whole grain items, and delayed a deadline for lower-salt food.
“I have visited many Kansas schools, as there are close to 300 school districts in Kansas,” said Roberts. “Considering how many districts there are in the United States, it is clear that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work for everyone.”
Roberts and Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the committee, collaborated on a child nutrition bill in 2016 that would have expanded the USDA’s summer food program, which provides meals for school-age children. The bill’s costs would have been offset by more stringent enforcement of eligibility rules for free and reduced-price meals at school. It was a vivid contrast to the starkly partisan bill written by House Republicans that proposed a three-state test of a block grant for nutrition funding, a higher reimbursement rate to schools for school breakfast, and a sharp reduction in the Community Eligibility Provision, which allows schools in poor neighborhoods to serve meals for free to all students. Both bills died at the end of 2016.
A day before the hearing, Roberts told a meeting of the North American Agricultural Journalists that “we had a good bill on nutrition” in 2016. “We [will] start with that bill and try to improve it. I think we’ll get it done.” Stabenow offered the same message at the NAAJ and the hearing: “We want to go forward, not backward.”
“Obesity rates for adolescent children continue to rise,” said Stabenow. “Yet at the same time, there are over 12 million children in this country who do not have enough to eat. This is a crisis of both child health and child hunger. We need to address this crisis by improving access to nutritious food, so our kids get healthier — not hungrier.”
During work on the 2016 bill, Roberts said consideration had to be given to the funding and operating limits of rural schools and districts with small enrollments when school nutrition rules are written.
Brandon Lipps, the USDA’s acting deputy undersecretary for nutrition, offered the administration’s assistance in developing a child nutrition bill. The administration’s three goals, he said, are better customer service, enhanced program integrity, and “to strengthen the bonds between (USDA) programs and self-sufficiency.” In a written statement, he did not explain the self-sufficiency goal.
Democratic Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked Lipps about declining participation in the Women, Infants, and Children program. “There are a number of factors,” said Lipps, adding that the causes are not fully understood. For one thing, with a stronger economy, fewer women and children qualify for WIC, he said. But there could be other obstacles as well, such as a requirement for separate interviews for each child, which works against keeping older children enrolled, he said.
School meal programs originated during the Cold War to assure a source of nutritious food for children. Roughly 30 million students a day eat a hot meal through school lunch, and an average of 14.7 million eat school breakfast. About 6.9 million low-income pregnant women, new mothers, and children up to age 5 are enrolled in the WIC program.
To watch a video of the hearing or to read written testimony by witnesses, click here.