Help Feed Our Kids

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Minnesota, Congresswoman Omar, for leading this Special Order hour, at such a critical time for our Nation's children.

Congresswoman Omar has been a champion for expanding access to universal school meals and ending childhood hunger, and indeed, all hunger in this country and around the globe, and I recognize her for her leadership.

Madam Speaker, my two sisters are schoolteachers in the Worcester public school system in Massachusetts. They remind me all the time that school meals are as important to a child's ability to learn as a textbook or a laptop. They wonder all the time why Congress, State governments, and the Federal Government don't get that.

They see children show up to school on Mondays hungry because they haven't eaten all weekend. It takes a while to get them the nutrition that they need so they can focus again. If you are hungry, you can't focus. If you can't focus, you can't learn. If you can't learn, you fall behind. It is that simple.

They also tell me that Fridays are a tough day because those same children come to them and ask if there is any food that they can take home, not just for them but for their families. I have heard heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story of children who are food insecure, who are hungry in this country.

If you ever meet a child or see a child who is hungry, it breaks your heart. It, quite frankly, angers me because we live in the richest country in the history of the world. Even before the pandemic, close to 40 million Americans didn't know where their next meal was going to come from.

I tell people all the time that hunger is a political condition. It is not a partisan condition. It shouldn't be a partisan condition. It is a political condition. By that I mean we have the food, we have the resources, we have the infrastructure, we have the knowledge of what we need to do. We have everything but the political will.

As has been pointed out here today, we are about to reach a hunger cliff at the end of June. Waivers are going to run out. Money is going to run out. If we don't do something, millions and millions of children will lose their school meals and will lose their summer meals as well.

During the pandemic, thankfully, schools received flexibility and funding to make sure their students got a healthy breakfast and lunch at school. This has been a lifeline for families and school districts facing rising costs and supply chain shortages.

We are coming to an end. All those safety measures that were put in place during the pandemic will expire. I think what we are coming to appreciate is that those safety measures should have been in place even if there wasn't a pandemic. We can't go back to the days when close to 13 million kids went to bed hungry every night in the country.

With the group of leaders who are here on the floor, members of the Progressive Caucus, as well as working with Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Bobby Scott, Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, and working with Chairwoman Stabenow over in the Senate, we have been trying to figure out ways to extend the flexibility and funding needed to get healthy food to America's students.

I believe that we will get there. The amazing leadership of Speaker Pelosi will get us all together and we will find a way forward. We will avoid this hunger cliff.

Madam Speaker, I am a liberal Democrat. I serve in this Congress, both in the House and Senate, with many conservative Republicans, and I understand that not everybody agrees on everything here. For example, I want free universal school meals for every kid to be part of our educational policy, and I want it there forever. I commend States like California, Vermont, and Maine for taking a lead in their States. Their legislatures have passed universal meals for their students. I want Massachusetts to follow. I want every State to follow.

I get it. Not everybody shares my view. I also get that in order to get anything to the President's desk we are going to have to navigate through the Senate, which is always a challenge because in the Senate you need 60 votes to have a cup of coffee, never mind pass a piece of legislation.

We are going to have to figure out what it is we can get done in the next couple of weeks. There are some who don't want as big a package as others. There are some who are insisting on offsets. There are some who are insisting on other things. We have to figure it out. We are going to have figure it out because our kids are important. They are 100 percent of our future, and we ought to treat them as such.

Finally, one last point. America used to think big about solving problems like hunger. In 1969, we held the first and only White House Conference on Hunger. It was the same year we landed on the moon. That conference led to a major expansion of the school lunch program and the creation of the Women, Infants, and Children program, among other things.

As a proud member of the Progressive Caucus, I have long thought that it is time for America to think big once again to solve problems like hunger. To think big the way we used to, not to manage problems, but to solve them. We have the food to end child hunger in America.

Again, it is a matter of building the political will. I personally believe that food ought to be a fundamental human right here in this country and around the world. I say this because I am thrilled that President Biden recently announced that he will host a White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to bring together experts from across the country, and all agencies within the Federal Government to create a plan, not to manage hunger in America, to end hunger in America.

It will be an opportunity for people with lived experiences to have their voices heard because sometimes we make decisions here and we don't talk to the people who are most affected by what we are trying to do.

We have the opportunity to prevent child hunger and to make universal free school meals a reality. This is our moment to make it happen. In the lead-up to this conference, Members of Congress have the opportunity to host listening sessions to hear directly from local educators and families who benefit from free school meals.

I encourage my colleagues to host these sessions and to transmit their findings to the White House so that the recommendations that come out of this conference reflect the power of school meals to change lives and improve nutrition among children.

Madam Speaker, I encourage not just progressive Members, I encourage moderate Members, and conservative Members to do listening sessions in their districts to hear about not only the extent of this problem, which is a costly problem, but hear about potential solutions so we can end hunger. If you are interested, you can reach out to my office, and we can point you in the right direction.

Madam Speaker, I, again, thank Congresswoman Omar for bringing us together at such a critical moment. There are some problems that we are faced with that I don't know what the solution is, but hunger is not one of them. This is a solvable problem that we can solve in a matter of a few years if we put our minds to it and if we work together.

Let's do something big, something bold, something that will reflect the goodness of the people of this country and make a real difference. It may be an example for the rest of the world.

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