Child Nutrition

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAKANO. I thank the ranking member. I appreciate the time allotted.

Mr. Speaker, in my 24 years as a public schoolteacher, I learned a lot about helping students reach their potential. I learned about project-based learning and STEM education, and I learned about the importance of arts and music in keeping students engaged and excited. But I also learned that there is no lesson plan or study guide that can improve a student's performance if they are hungry. Good nutrition is the foundation to a good education.

With that experience in mind, I rise to express my frustration and sadness with the Republicans' proposal to reauthorize the so-called Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act. The draft bill published last week includes several provisions that would restrict students' access to nutritious food, particularly children in America's poorest neighborhoods.

The proposal undermines nutritional standards for schools despite those standards receiving overwhelming support from pediatricians and public health officials. It weakens a popular program designed to give poor students access to fresh fruits and vegetables in communities where they are scarce, and it increases the burden on poor families to prove that their children are eligible for lunch programs.

But the impact of these provisions is mild compared to what Republicans are proposing to do with CEP, or the Community Eligibility Provision. CEP streamlines National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs by automatically enrolling students who live in areas with high rates of poverty. It was passed with bipartisan support just 6 years ago and it is responsible for feeding more than 3 million students every year.

Now Republicans are seeking to change the CEP formula to kick many poor communities out of the program. Their goal is to save money by allowing fewer students to enroll in breakfast and lunch programs. Not only is this bad policy that will hurt student performance in low- income schools, it is cruel. In my district alone, this would affect more than 6,000 students. Nationwide it will severely damage a program that is critical to both fighting child poverty and closing the achievement gap in education.

There is a troubling asymmetry to conservatives' approach to spending. When it comes to tax cuts for large businesses that cost this country billions of dollars, conservatives are generous with taxpayer money. But when it comes to hungry students in America's poorest communities, that is when it is time to cut back. That is when it is time to be stingy. That is when they turn their backs on people in need.

Earlier this week, Speaker Ryan said that conservatism is just a happy way of life. This brand of conservatism is not a happy way of life for thousands of hungry children who will lose access to food at school. It is not a happy life for the parents of those children who are struggling every day to provide for them, and it is not a happy life for the generation of students who do not have the foundation to reach their potential.

Who could be happy when so many Americans are suffering?

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