CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

April 11, 1968

Page 9728

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am pleased to cosponsor Senator HART's proposal to substitute the language of H.R. 15398 for the bill reported by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry on the National school lunch program.

An important purpose of this amendment is to extend the coverage of the National School Lunch Act to cover daycare institutions which provide care for children in poor areas or areas with a high concentration of working mothers.

At the present time there is no program designed to combat malnutrition in our very young children. In addition, the National School Lunch Act does not operate in the summer months when the schools are closed.

Educators have told us that children do far better in their schoolwork and learn faster when they are not hungry. Medical science has shown that continued malnutrition retards mental as well as physical development.

When the Congress passed the 1967 Social Security Act Amendments, we provided a new training program for unemployed mothers on the welfare rolls. This will result in a great need for additional child day-care centers. As these centers become filled with children, it is essential that the nutritional needs of the children be met.

The program is vital to these preschool children to prevent early physical and mental damage which often is irrevocable. Head Start officials have stated that in some areas of the country they have discovered anemia rates of over 50 percent in Head Start enrollees. This clearly indicates the great need for an expanded child nutrition program.

This is a modest proposal, but one which is necessary for the health and well-being of many of our Nation's children. I urge my colleagues to support the proposal advanced by the senior Senator from Michigan [Mr. HART].

Mr. CASE. Mr. President, I am glad to join Senator HART and Senator MUSKIE in urging the Senate to improve child nutrition by extending the national school lunch program to children beyond those enrolled in school, as provided in the House-passed version of H.R. 15398.

For over 20 years the national school lunch program has benefited millions of school children by providing them with at least one nutritious meal a day in school. Today Federal assistance under the program helps to provide lunches for some 19 million children attending 73,000 public and private nonprofit schools. According to testimony given before the recent House subcommittee hearings on the program, the school lunch is the only nutritious meal many of these children receive each day.

As far as it goes, the school lunch program is a real help in meeting nutritional needs of our young children. But it does not operate in the summer months and, during the school year, only the children enrolled in and attending school receive its benefits. Younger preschool children are not included.

To close this gap, I joined with several others earlier this year in cosponsoring a bill extending the benefits of the school lunch program to a broader group. Similar legislation in the House. H.R. 15398, was recently passed by a rollcall vote of 398 to 0.

By adopting the language of the House-passed bill instead of the Senate committee amendments, Federal assistance under the school lunch program would be made available on a year-round basis to children in public or private non-profit day care centers, settlement houses, neighborhood houses and private nonprofit preschool activities. During the summer months the lunch program would be made available to school children who are engaged in recreational programs, such as day camps and youth centers. This, it seems to me, is a particularly important provision for children of low-income families who do not receive adequate nutritional meals when the school cafeteria is closed.

Additionally, the bill would extend the very successful pilot school breakfast program authorized under the Child Nutrition Act of 1966. This program is now reaching 116,000 children and, according to teachers and school officials, has resulted in marked improvement in school performance and lower school absenteeism.

In view of the widely recognized benefits of the school lunch program and the need to raise the nutrition level of children, particularly in areas where poor economic conditions exist, the Senate committee action in eliminating entirely the day care and summer program features of the lunch program is a regrettable and regressive step.

Just a few weeks ago the President's Commission on Civil Disorders reported on the need to alleviate the harsh living conditions in the ghetto. Testimony presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Poverty in recent months has indicated that the need to improve the health and well-being of the rural poor is no less than the need in our cities.

The school lunch program, unlike many Federal programs, translates Federal dollars into a visible, tangible benefit for every eligible schoolchild. Failure to extend it would, in my judgment, be turning a deaf ear to the Nation's poverty-stricken in both urban and rural areas.

Furthermore, the social security amendments adopted by the Congress during the last session require a substantial expansion of day-care facilities for the children of welfare recipients who are undertaking job training.

Because existing day public day care centers cannot meet this need, private centers for needy preschool children will have to be established in churches and neighborhood settlement houses in communities where the children live. Extending the lunch program to these centers is a logical and necessary step in strengthening and contributing to the success of the day-care program Congress mandated last year.

I, therefore, urge the Senate to support this effort to raise the level of child nutrition by approving the language of the House-passed bill.

Mr. COOPER. Mr. President, I will support the amendment to the National School Lunch Act, H.R. 15398, as approved by the House of Representatives, to extend for 3 years the school breakfast program, and to enable the Department of Agriculture to establish a new food program for children not yet in school and for children in summer programs.

I am one of the cosponsors of S. 2871, introduced by Senator MONTOYA as a companion bill to the House measure, having provisions very similar to those approved by the House. My principal reason for sponsoring this bill was its provision to make permanent the pilot school breakfast program, which would otherwise expire on June 30, 1968, and to increase the authorization for the breakfast program.

I was a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture in 1966, when it considered and recommended the Child Nutrition Act, and remember our discussions of the breakfast proposal at that time. While funds for the program have been sharply limited, we know it has been very helpful. One who visits these schools serving areas in which poor economic conditions exist, is told how much the breakfasts mean, not only in providing food for the children from families who do not have adequate diets, but also in terms of their educational value. The children receiving breakfasts are said to be more attentive, to be less restless and better able to concentrate especially in the lower grades. I would assume it is true that a child cannot be expected to do his best work or learn his lessons easily while hungry.

I know that the bill, H.R. 15398, upon which the House Committee on Education and Labor held hearings, and as recommended to the House by the chairman of that committee, Congressman CARL PERKINS, of Kentucky, made the school breakfast program permanent and removed the restrictions on its authorization. During its consideration by the House, the bill was amended to extend the breakfast program for 3 years, and to maintain it on a pilot basis with authorizations of $6,500,000 for fiscal 1969, $10,000,000 for fiscal 1970, and $12,000,000 for fiscal 1971. While $6,500,000 is the amount recommended to be appropriated in the President's fiscal 1969 budget, I point out that this authorization is a reduction from the level of $10,000,000 approved by the Senate Committee on Agriculture and authorized for the current fiscal year. I believe the breakfast program has been proved, and deserves instead to be expanded.

For example in my own State of Kentucky, I understand that 77 schools have the breakfast program, which is received by nearly 15,000 children. I believe none of these schools, however, are located in eastern Kentucky, where the need is very great. A number of schools in eastern Kentucky -- including examples visited recently on a field trip of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty -- have breakfast programs but they are evidently financed through title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Last week I received a report from Mr. C. E. Bevins of the Kentucky Department of Education, who is director of the school lunch program in our State, calling attention to the large number of boys and girls who come to school without breakfast, and who he says "are low achievers academically during the morning hours simply because they have not had adequate nutrition at the beginning of the day." He gives his opinion that taxpayers will receive maximum benefits from the breakfast program, because it can make their expenditures for education more effective. Mr. Bevins says that Kentucky would like to extend the breakfast program to 50,000 children, which would require a reimbursement of over $1 million.

While I do not have the figures at hand on the extent of the school feeding programs financed through title I, ESEA, and other programs, it seems to me that these grants to local schools are badly needed for other educational purposes. The Department of Agriculture, which has specific legislative authority for such school food programs, and the States which carry them out, have an outstanding record in operating the school lunch programs. They are acknowledged to be successful, well run, and broadly supported in the Congress and in the country. It is for this reason that I hope the breakfast authorization, limited by the House floor amendment and by the Senate committee, will be increased in the future. It seems to me we should be thinking in terms of a school breakfast program funded at a level at least 10 or 15 percent the size of the school lunch program-which would be on the order of $25 million to $40 million annually.

As a member of the Committee on Agriculture until this Congress, and each year before the Subcommittee on Agricultural Appropriations, I have supported the school lunch and school milk programs. Several years ago I joined with Senator HART of Michigan, in securing the first appropriations for section 11 to provide reduced price and free lunches to children who could not afford to pay. I consider it most important that section 11 funds be realistically increased for I can think of nothing that would do more good than to insure at least one sound meal a day for these children in isolated and deprived rural areas, and also in the deprived areas of our central cities. Section 11 is an existing program, the need is apparent, and it is only a matter of giving priority to its adequate funding.

I will be glad to support the motion by Senator HART and others to substitute H.R. 15398 as passed by the House for the very limited 2-year bill before the Senate. I consider that food for children in school, and as provided by this bill for children in preschool activities and in summer programs, an opportunity to meet a basic need and a first purpose of our society. These programs are not only humane, but of great benefit to our country in building sound bodies and clear minds among the young people who represent our hope.