Some of the money will come from
EQIP program

By JERRY HAGSTROM

For the Capital Press

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Senate Agriculture Committee on March 24 reported out the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, a bill to reauthorize the child nutrition programs with a $4.5 billion increase in funding over 10 years for school, after-school and summer meal programs.

The committee unanimously supported the bill by a bipartisan voice vote.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., noted that the bill provides the biggest increase ever in child nutrition programs and that the bill's 6-cent increase in payments to schools that improve the quality of school meals is the first increase since 1973.

"Hunger is a disease, but it is a disease we have a cure for," Lincoln said.

The bill falls short of President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal for a $10 billion increase over 10 years to meet his goal of ending childhood hunger by 2015. Lincoln, who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee, said she would ask Finance Chairman Max Baucus to try to find more offsets for child nutrition from programs under his jurisdiction.

The bill reauthorizes for five years the meal programs, the special nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children known as WIC and the child and adult care feeding program.

Of the $4.5 billion, $1.2 billion would help lift the number of children who receive food, while $3.2 billion would go toward improving the quality of meals and fighting childhood obesity.

The bill also contains provisions to give USDA the power to set standards for all foods that can be served in schools, including those sold in vending machines and a la carte lines from which children buy alternatives to the school lunch. It also establishes nutrition requirements for childcare providers participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program and provides mandatory funding for schools to establish gardens and bring local foods into school cafeterias. Its WIC provisions would encourage low-income women participants to breast feed.

The increases in funding would be offset by a $1 billion decrease in school food purchases, a $1.2 billion decrease in grants to states to teach food stamp recipients healthier eating habits and a $2.2 billion decrease in the authorization levels for the environmental quality incentives program, which is used by farmers and ranchers to address environmental problems.

Lincoln noted that appropriators have been cutting EQIP and maintained that the bill would "lock in" EQIP funding by assuring a slow rate of growth in the program. Other senators said there was nothing to prevent appropriators from continuing to make cuts.

Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., offered an amendment to shift the offset to the Conservation Stewardship Program, another USDA environmental program, and to provide an additional $100 million for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which distributes commodities, and $275 million over 5 years for summer feeding programs.

Chambliss argued that demand was higher for EQIP than for CSP, but Lincoln and Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Chairman Tom Harkin, who created CSP when he chaired the agriculture committee, opposed the amendment. All 11 Democrats on the committee voted against it, while all 9 Republicans voted for it.

At a joint news conference with Lincoln after the markup, Chambliss said he supports the bill, but will offer his amendment to change offsets on the floor.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said he would offer a floor amendment to cut direct payments to farmers to provide more money for the summer feeding program and for transportation for rural children to summer feeding program sites. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., offered and withdrew an amendment to ban transfats in school foods, but said she would offer it on the floor.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., will try to mark up the bill before Memorial Day, a House Democratic aide said. Lincoln so far has used offsets from Farm Bill programs under her jurisdiction, but it will be more difficult for Miller to identify offsets because his committee does not have jurisdiction over the Farm Bill.