Help Feed Our Kids
Floor Speech
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, we are on the brink of a hunger crisis, both here in the United States and around the globe. Right now, more than 38 million people, including 12 million children, are food insecure in the United States.
Food prices are expected to rise up to 7.5 percent this year, stretching already tight family budgets.
In my home State of Minnesota, dozens of hunger relief organizations are warning of the hungriest summer on record if the State doesn't convene a special session to combat hunger.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I passed the MEALS Act to let districts provide universal meals in the hope of preventing a massive hunger crisis. It worked. Over 30 million kids are now estimated to receive school meals.
In August 2020, when the waivers were on the verge of expiring, Representative Pingree and I joined 119 of our colleagues in sending a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture urging him to extend the school meal waivers.
Throughout the pandemic, I sent three letters and worked tirelessly to ensure every child can eat. Though we were able to secure these critical waiver extensions, the uncertainty cost millions of families and school administrators to panic and stress.
Now, we find ourselves in a familiar place where at the end of this month--in just 15 days--millions of children are again at risk of going hungry as the school meal waivers are set to expire.
Let me be clear: We cannot let these lifesaving waivers lapse as the pandemic rages on. I am working with the Education and Labor Committee and leadership to ensure that our children are continuing to be fed.
But we can't stop there. We need permanent solutions. As a former community nutrition educator, childhood hunger is an issue I know all too well. That is why one of the first bills I introduced after I was sworn in was the Universal School Meals Program Act with Senators Sanders and Gillibrand.
My bill would provide free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student and eliminate school meal debt. No child in the wealthiest country in the world should experience food insecurity. We here in the United States must lead to end child hunger here at home and we must continue to lead to stop this global hunger crisis.
Every night up to 811 million people around the globe go to bed hungry. Of the 811 million, 276 million people are facing acute food insecurity and about 50 million people are facing what the U.N. World Food Programme describes as ``emergency levels of hunger.''
While the United States has provided $2.6 billion to help other countries with food shortages, we need other countries to step up and do their part. With 49 million people around the world on the verge of famine, we need to rally all leaders to increase the supply of food and fertilizers; support basic safety nets for those without food; and fund humanitarian operations to reduce famine and hunger.
We have to remember what got us to this point: Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine has disrupted exports from two of the world's biggest wheat producers making wheat unaffordable and unattainable for millions.
Right now, India, Argentina, Australia, and Canada collectively have the power to make up for most of the wheat lost due to the war or the restrictions that are being created by some other countries. That is why we need countries around the world to step up and do their part to combat the wheat shortage, which is especially being felt in the Horn of Africa.
The U.N. has warned about the imminent ``explosion of child deaths'' due to food insecurity and malnutrition in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, 29 percent of children are experiencing acute malnutrition. About 7 million livestock in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia have died since last fall due to widespread drought.
This food crisis in the Horn of Africa and all parts of the globe will only get worse unless we take steps to stop this catastrophe from taking hold.
We have to act to address the nexus of inflation, war, and climate change. Now is the time to act.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from New Mexico (Ms. Stansbury).
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Adams).
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), who also chairs the Caucus on Hunger.
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for his remarks.
The chairman is right that when we invest in our children, who are assets to our future, it pays dividends. It is important that we recognize that it shouldn't be a partisan issue to want to feed the bellies of our children before we try to feed their brains. We know from study after study that kids do better in school when they are fed. When they have adequate nutrition, they show up to school much more ready to learn, and their behavior in itself is much different.
Example after example, we found, as we looked into this, schoolwide free meals improve math performance in districts where relatively few students qualify under the income-based programs Brookings found. A study found that students in schools with universal school meals fare better on tests than their peers without these meals. That is according to Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
The nutrition quality of school meals has improved. Students with universal school meal programs are being offered more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. That means that they are getting the nutrients that will help with their development. New York City, where there have been universal school meals, a study found that regardless of poverty status, the universal school meals program improved students' perception of bullying, fighting, and safety at their schools.
Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bowman).
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley).
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Ms. OMAR. Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Pressley for her remarks.
Madam Speaker, I want for us to zoom out a little bit when we think about the kind of poverty that exists in our country.
There are 37.2 million Americans who live in poverty. As I have stated earlier, we have 38 million people, including 12 million children, who are food insecure.
One in 25 households in the U.S. experience very low food security, where families regularly skip meals because they can't afford more food.
One in 15 U.S. seniors faces hunger. That is 5.2 million seniors who are food insecure.
Madam Speaker, 2.1 million households living in rural communities face hunger. Americans living in rural communities face hunger at higher rates than those in urban areas, and BIPOC communities are especially hard-hit by hunger. Rural communities make up to 63 percent of the counties in the U.S. and 91 percent of counties with the highest rates of overall food insecurity.
In 2019, SNAP and school meals lifted 3.2 million people out of poverty.
If we just look at Minnesota alone, 432,000 people are facing hunger, and of them, 147,000 are children. That is 1 in 13 people and 1 in 9 children who face hunger in Minnesota.
In April 2022, Minnesotans made 463,000 visits to their food shelves. That is a 70 percent increase compared to April 2021.
Since January 2022, food shelf visits statewide have increased by 39 percent.
Madam Speaker, 2021 was the first year since 2014 that Minnesota didn't see an annual increase in food shelf visits. The reason for that, Madam Speaker, is because of the pandemic relief programs.
We heard from so many people from across Minnesota and across the country, and I would just like to share some of their stories on how some of these pandemic relief programs have helped them.
Eric from Willmar, Minnesota, recently shared how he struggles to provide for himself and his siblings. Right before the pandemic, his mother passed away, and he became the legal guardian of his younger siblings. Concerned about providing enough food to eat, he was grateful for the meals his siblings could get at school because of the MEALS Act.
Amber, a mother from Duluth, Minnesota, shared how putting four kids through school has been a financial struggle. Both she and her husband work, making just above the threshold to qualify for the traditional free lunches. When my bill was passed out of the House, the MEALS Act allowed schools to provide school meals to all students, including Amber's four children, and she called it ``godsent and a blessing.''
Yesterday, we got an email from a school food service director for a group of 16 school districts in upstate central New York.
She wrote: ``It has been an incredibly difficult few years for school food service with supply chain issues, rising costs of food, virtue, hybrid schedules, different serving models, labor shortages . . . but it has been a joy and privilege to see the direct impact of serving breakfast and lunch for free to all students.
``Our program has grown from serving about 1,500 breakfasts and 5,600 lunches prepandemic to 3,500 breakfasts and 7,500 lunches per day this school year. The stigma of free meals is gone since we are serving all students on a truly even playing field.''
She went on to say: ``The end of the child nutrition waivers, most significantly the one that allows free meals for all students, will be a crushing blow to our program, our students, and our communities.''
``Families have come to appreciate and rely on the free meals,'' she says. ``We anticipate spending the next year having to have hard conversations with upset parents who are struggling to pay their account balances.
``The argument that students who really need it can apply for free and reduced meals just doesn't cut it. There is a huge gap between the income guidelines and truly being able to cover all of life's expenses, including school meals.
``Our school nutrition program, students, and community thrived with universal free meals. Without them, the future looks dim.''
That is why we are urgently asking Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to not allow for these waivers to lapse. It is detrimental for us not to act and do the right thing.
We also heard from a registered dietitian and the food service director for a small rural school district. She wrote: ``Our enrollment pre-K-12 is only 660 students, but well over half of them live in food- insecure homes. Prior to the waivers, in February of 2020, only 20 percent of our youngest students in pre-K-6 ate breakfast with us.
``They would come in from the buses separate from their peers, singled out as `free breakfast kids' while the others waited to start their day. . . . The last 2\1/2\ years has seen a sea change for our tiny school district.
``Due to free meals for all, we are able to transition our students starting in September 2020 to a Breakfast in the Classroom Program. Every day, they have a choice of the hot, nutritious meal of the day or cereal, both options served with fruit and ice-cold milk.
``Students take menus home at the beginning of the month, decide on which days they would like what meals. Teachers work collaboratively with the food service department to preorder breakfast daily. . . . Our breakfast participation has skyrocketed from 20 percent in February 2020 to 85 percent as of Friday of last week. Our numbers continue to grow. And even better? Eating breakfast together as a school community has become part of the woven fabric of our little district. . . . What will September look like without these waivers?'' she asks.
``It will be heartbreaking. . . . With the inflation we have seen reflected in grocery store prices, some of these students may well come to school with empty bellies. We will lose the sense of community, solidarity, and unity we have built over these past 2\1/2\ years. The stigma of `needing help' will be stamped upon the kids who are lucky enough to qualify while many others slip through the cracks, unlucky to have adults in their households who make enough to disqualify them from receiving benefits but poor enough to struggle as they balance $5 per gallon gasoline, food, and increased rent.
``We are literally begging all of you in Congress to please help us keep our kids fed. So many of them depend upon us. As we know, it is so hard to learn on an empty stomach.''
I will end with where I started. This is a crisis. As I have always said, as someone who has lived in a war-engulfed country, who has lived in a refugee camp, who has experienced what severe hunger can look like for a child who doesn't have access to food, it is baffling to me that we see some of these stories coming out of communities here in the United States, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
If we truly care about our children, and if we truly care about building a future generation that is ready to lead in our country, we have to care about getting them educated and ready. You cannot feed the brains of children if their bellies are not fed. We must act, and we must act now.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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