Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004

CHILD NUTRITION AND WIC REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - June 24, 2004)

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the Senate bill (S. 2507) to amend the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 to provide children with increased access to food and nutrition assistance, to simplify program operations and improve program management, to reauthorize child nutrition programs, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, although I do not intend to object, I ask the gentleman to offer an explanation of his request.

Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his explanation.

Continuing under my reservation of objection, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), ranking member of the committee.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her explanation. And also I want to thank her for all of her hard work and her advocacy on behalf of children in this program and families in this program.
She has very much made a difference in the outcome of this legislation by her efforts.

Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation of objection, I yield to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) for his remarks.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Delaware for his explanation. I also want to thank him for all of his work and his participation. He is one of those individuals in this institution that makes a bipartisan agreement like this able to be brought up on unanimous consent because of his cooperation and his advocacy on behalf of our children. So I thank the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle).

Mr. Speaker, continuing under my reservation of objection, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the committee.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I thank the gentleman for his remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), and thank her for her participation in this legislation.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, continuing to reserve the right to object, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Los Angeles, California (Ms. Waters).

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation of objection, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments and participation in the resolution of the issue concerning the WIC-only stores.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, continuing my reservation, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I again want to support this legislation. I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner); the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle); and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) for all of their work and cooperation. I know it continues to mystify some people in the House how the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) and I can continue to work together, and that the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) can come to these bipartisan agreements with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) on my side.

We have serious philosophical differences on many issues, but we have been able to put them aside from time to time on behalf of the children of this Nation, and here I think we have made major improvements in this legislation to the benefit of the 27 million children who participate in this program every school day, to the 2 million children who will participate in the summer feeding and the child care programs in this country, and nearly 7.5 million poor women and children who participate in the Women, Infants and Children program, a program that has demonstrated that we get many, many, many times the return on the money we invest in the WIC program in the reduction of health care costs to the mother and the newborn child because we are able to interact with them and give them good advice about their pregnancy, about the birth of their child and about the care of their child in the early moments of life.

It was almost 30 years ago this year in this Congress when I stood here on a similar unanimous consent request to extend and make permanent the Women, Infants and Children program. It has returned billions of dollars in savings to this country, and, more importantly, it has provided for millions of newborn babies to be born healthy, to avoid the problems of low birth weight and their mothers the problems of troubled pregnancies and premature births.

For that, we are very grateful to the people who work so hard in this program to develop its nutritional benefits and its healthcare benefits.

I also want to thank my colleagues for working so hard to try to expand the efforts to eliminate and reduce paperwork and to make sure that we are coordinating these programs with other programs, such as the Medicaid agencies and food stamp offices, to make sure they know of the accessibility to these programs, to remove the barriers to migrant children and homeless and runaway youth and to expand the opportunities to military families.

It is unfortunate that in this country we have so many people in poverty or have such low wages, many of whom work the year-round, that are eligible for this program, but it is also very fortunate for those individuals and good for our country that we have this program to extend these nutritional and health benefits to them.

I wish we would have been able to make a better statement, a greater statement, and a better direction for this country on the problems of childhood obesity. These rates have doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the last two decades. We cannot ignore the opportunity we have to work with these children on a whole range of solutions to the problems of obesity while we have them in school. One which is very important to be transmitted to them is the benefit of a good and healthy diet. This program should be compatible with those goals. I hope we have sent a message to the program that we want them to develop a healthier diet, a better diet, but we also want to send the message of exercise, of healthy living outside of school by those young people.

Finally, we have all thanked one another, but this is a rare moment in this session of Congress, in these 2 years, that stand here reporting under unanimous consent a bipartisan piece of legislation of this significance. So I do want to thank again the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) for all of his cooperation in moving this legislation in a timely fashion, so we would have an opportunity to work with the Senate; to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) for developing the substance of this legislation, the changes in this legislation, the reforms in this legislation and the expansion of opportunity for these children and for their families.

I certainly want to thank Senator Harkin, who I came to Congress with, for all of his hard and continuing work on child nutrition and food programs in this Nation and internationally, and Chairman Cochran, who I have had an opportunity to work with on so many programs affecting children in literacy and nutrition and other benefits such as that.

Finally, I want to thank the staff members of our committee. On our side of the aisle, Lynda Theil, Denise Forte and Joe Novotny; the people from CRS, Joe Richardson and Donna Porter, who provided us so much technical assistance and expertise; to Tyson Redpath on the staff of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), and Sarah Rittling on the staff of the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle); and the Republican staff in the House, Kate Houston, Stephanie Milburn, Sally Lovejoy, Krisann Pearce and Julian Baer, for all of their work, for their consistence.

The fact of the matter is, it was the cooperation among the staffs that allowed this bill to be reported on a timely basis as we come toward the end of this session of Congress.

I would also like to thank Derek Miller of Senator Harkin's staff and Dave Johnson of Senator Cochran's staff.

Mr. Speaker, I think the House and the Senate can be very proud of this legislation, and I know that those individuals, the American School Food Service Association, the Food Research and Action Center, the WIC directors, the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and so many others that I will submit for the RECORD, were great advocates of the improvements made in this legislation and the expansion of nutritional and health opportunities for the participants.

Mr. Speaker, I include for the RECORD the list of supporters of this legislation.

American Association of School Administrators.
American Commodity Distribution Association.
American Dietetic Association.
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
American School Food Service Association (ASFSA).
America's Second Harvest.
Anti Hunger Action Committee.
Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs.
Bread for the World.
Catholic Charities USA.
Central Coast Hunger Coalition.
Chicago Jobs Council.
Children's Defense Fund.
Children's Foundation.
Coalition of Labor Union Women.
Coalition of Religious Communities (Utah).
Coalition on Human Needs.
Colorado Anti-Hunger Network.
Colorado Center on Law and Policy.
Community Food Security Coalition.
Congressional Hunger Center.
Connecticut Association for Human Services.
Crossroads Urban Center.
Denver Urban Ministries.
EBT Industry Council of the Electronic Funds Transfer Association.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Food and Allied Service Trades Department (FAST), AFL-CIO.
Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).
FOOD Share, Inc.
Greater Upstate Law Project, NY.
Green Consulting Services, Miami, FL.
Hudson Valley Poverty Law Center, NY.
Human Services Coalition of Dade County.
Hunger Action Network of New York State.
I Am Your Child Foundation.
Indiana Coalition on Housing and Homeless Issues, Inc.
Institute Justice Team, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.
Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
Just Harvest, Pittsburgh, PA.
Lutheran Advocacy Ministry-Colorado.
Migrant Legal Action Program.
Monterey County Farm to School Partnership.
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).
National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems.
National Association of State Boards of Education.
National Coalition for the Homeless.
National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.
National Council of Jewish Women.
National Farmers Union.
National Grange.
National Head Start Association.
National Priorities Project.
National PTA.
National Student Campaign Against Hunger and Homelessness.
National WIC Association (NWA).
National Women's Law Center.
Northeast Missouri Client Council for Human Needs, Inc.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office.
Public Children Services Association of Ohio.
Public Interest Law Office of Rochester, NY.
Public Justice Center.
RESULTS.
Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.
Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties.
Share Our Strength (SOS).
The Advocacy for the Poor, Inc., Winston-Salem, NC.
The Partnership Center, Ltd.
Union for Reform Judaism.
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).
United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Association.
WHEAT, Phoenix, AZ.
Women of Reform Judaism.
World Hunger Year.

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.