Providing for Consideration of H.R. Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Ensuring Accountability in Agency Rulemaking Act; and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is here in the Capitol today. The President of Ukraine left his war-torn country to come to the United States to plead for our help in repelling Putin's murderous and unlawful invasion, in protecting his people, and in preserving their democracy.

As he did so, Putin unleashed a devastating missile attack on Kyiv and was captured on video drinking champagne and toasting the downfall of Ukraine if its Western allies falter.

President Zelenskyy came here to ask the United States to stand tall and honor its commitment to an ally, its commitment to democracy, and its commitment to upholding international law. In response, the United States House of Representatives is debating the merits of chocolate milk.

We will not long remember the MAGA majority's great gas stove war of 2023 or their attempts to make it easier to kill the endangered lesser prairie-chicken, but the sad fact is, these bills have consumed weeks of precious floor time this year as the House majority struggles to pass any legislation of note.

The world will, however, remember if the United States fails to support Ukraine in its hour of need.

President Zelenskyy, our NATO allies, and the American people should expect better from this Congress. Under this extremist majority, they are doomed to disappointment, which again brings us here today to debate chocolate milk.

When I was home this past weekend, I had the chance to talk with many of my constituents. I met with women small business owners to discuss their challenges. I talked to college students about their concerns regarding attacks on reproductive freedom here in the United States. I gathered with people in our community who have lost loved ones, neighbors, and friends to gun violence, and I listened to their calls for action on commonsense gun safety legislation.

Overwhelmingly, people came to talk to me about making our country a place where all Americans, all children, can thrive. That means bringing down the cost of healthcare, childcare, household energy, and high-speed internet so families can care for their kids, heat their homes, and stay connected. This means investing in infrastructure, good-paying jobs, and public education so we can strengthen our economy, lower costs, build safer communities, and create opportunities so everyone has a shot at a brighter future.

These are the things I came to Congress to do.

In these last legislative days of the year, these aren't the things that House Republicans are doing. I would call it unbelievable except we have seen the same story play out over and over again in this Chamber all year.

For months on end, MAGA extremists have dragged our country to the brink of default, nearly shut down the government twice, and even ousted their own Speaker. Pushed by the most extreme members of their Conference, they have brought chaos to the House floor. They have put up bills only for them to tank and have to be withdrawn as they fight among themselves. They spent 25 days just arguing over which one of them should be Speaker. This is all on the American people's dime.

Now, with pressing challenges at home and around the world, they are pushing a completely discredited impeachment inquiry and other naked political stunts, all to distract from their own inability to govern. They have done nothing to deliver for the American people, and Americans deserve better than this.

House Republicans refuse to get their act together. Today, they have brought to the floor two misguided and marginal bills that fail to address any of the major threats or concerns our country or our constituents face. Both bills open the door to the influence of more special interests in our government's functions.

I should note that, today, we were supposed to consider two additional bills impacting our national security and individual rights. Due to infighting among Republicans and their own committee chairs, these measures were pulled last night from the schedule, leaving us with another wasted day of chaos and incompetence.

The first bill we have today is H.R. 1147, which makes changes to school nutrition standards in a way that would undermine science and undo important progress made over the past 13 years.

Schools play an essential role in our kids' health. For so many children, the meals they get at school represent the majority of calories and the most nutritious meals they consume all day.

We saw this reality clearly during the first days of the pandemic when, as schools closed down, the prospect of missed school breakfasts and lunches threatened the health of children across America.

The meals served in schools are based on the most recent set of dietary guidelines as determined by child nutrition experts. These guidelines stay current and are updated at least every 5 years. In fact, in February of this year, the Biden-Harris administration began the latest update.

When I served on my local school board, and before as a Home and School president, I was involved in efforts to improve and implement what was at the time new Federal improved nutrition standards for our district's meals.

Through that experience, I know just how important nutritious meals are to helping students succeed and form lifelong healthy habits. We have seen immense benefits since Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger- Free Kids Act in 2010.

The research shows that the millions of children who participate in school meal programs have better overall diet quality than those who do not. Studies prove, despite arguments to the contrary, that students eat and enjoy these meals. When presented with healthy choices, they take them.

Allowing whole milk, particularly flavored whole milk, to be served in schools is against current dietary recommendations and against the recommendation of experts, including the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Heart Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

We know that too much saturated fat can raise bad cholesterol levels, a known cause of heart disease. Most troubling, many varieties of flavored milk that are pushed by this bill contain unhealthy chemicals, such as artificial colors and flavors, and nearly twice the amount of sugar as plain milk.

At a time when one in five school-age children already has adverse cholesterol levels, we should not be making it easier to serve unhealthier meals in schools.

This bill blatantly ignores the science.

Even if you deny these facts, everyone should be able to admit we are long overdue for a comprehensive child nutrition reauthorization. We owe it to students and their families to consistently improve the meals that schools are serving. The last comprehensive reauthorization of the laws governing school meal programs was done 13 years ago.

I wish the Republican majority would spend more time helping to pass comprehensive policies to support our schools as they work to provide healthier and more satisfying meals to our students within current nutritional standards. We should not waste time on this one-off change to serve special interests that circumvent the normal process for updating meal standards.

I think we owe it to our children, their health, and their futures to let the experts guide what we are providing them to eat in schools. We should not allow politicians to make the decisions in what should be a science-based process.

Today, we are also considering H.R. 357, another attempt by the Republican majority to derail the Federal rulemaking process. This is an unnecessary and vague bill designed to undermine the critical work of Federal agencies.

It is part of a MAGA narrative that unfairly and untruthfully paints hardworking Federal employees, nonpartisan experts in their fields, as faceless bureaucrats who are somehow hostile to everyday Americans.

The fact is that the regulatory process that our Republican colleagues seek to frame as a battle against some vast bureaucratic conspiracy is actually an essential part of ensuring that we all have clean air and water to breathe and drink, healthy food to eat, and safe planes, trains, and automobiles to travel in.

The truth is that Congress already has a wide range of ways to exercise oversight and control over rulemaking.

If the majority is so concerned about improving the process, they would join Democratic efforts to ensure corporate interests can't game that process. They would advocate for incorporating more public feedback in those agencies' decisions.

They don't really want to make the process better. Instead, bills like this would create a bottleneck in our government's operations that will prevent rules that the Republican majority doesn't like.

This bill would politicize the process of confirming nominees to administrative agencies even more than it is already. Individual Senators would have even more incentive to block an administration's nomination for partisan and corporate goals. More corporate influence would be allowed to infiltrate the Senate confirmation process. Ultimately, our agencies would be obstructed from doing important work to protect the American people's health and safety and making government function better.

It is clear my Republican colleagues don't want to make our government work better. These aren't traditional conservatives. They are nihilists dedicated to grinding government to a halt.

With this bill and their previous efforts to decimate Federal rulemaking, they prefer to upend the regulatory process, even if it improves the lives of Americans every single day.

The Federal Government has long played an important role in promoting the health, safety, and welfare of the American people. We should ensure that it is able to continue doing so.

Again and again, we have seen this Republican majority prioritize the wrong things this year, and today is no different. They are using valuable floor time and committee time to pass marginal bills, enable their own infighting, and launch an act of petty political vengeance against the current President. Then, they are going to call it a year and go home for the holidays. This is an unacceptable way to govern. It is not governance at all.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply oppose this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

The epidemic of gun violence has touched every corner of America, tragically devastating families, tearing apart communities, and scarring schoolchildren.

In 2022, nearly 50,000 people died by guns, an average of one person every 11 minutes. This includes almost 20,000 homicides. Mass shootings skyrocketed from 272 in 2014 to 645 last year. In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for American children and adolescents. From 2013 to 2022, there was a staggering 87 percent increase in the child and teen firearm death rate.

In 2023, the heartbreak has only continued. As of today, there have been over 40,000 lives lost and over 630 mass shootings. Over 800 schoolchildren 11 years old or under have been killed or injured with guns. Over 4,000 school-age teens have been touched by gun violence.

The American people are crying out for Congress to act. Yet, the House of Representatives is using its precious time to debate chocolate milk. The American people deserve better.

House Democrats are ready to work with Republicans to tackle this epidemic. If we defeat the previous question today, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 715, a bipartisan bill to require a background check for every firearm sale.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, as well, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

With the rule we consider today, the Republican majority ends a failed year in the choke hold of its most extreme members. They are finishing out 2023 as they started: unproductive, ineffective, and unconcerned for the American people. They have ignored the real problems facing our Nation today, issues like the gun violence crisis, ongoing threats to Americans' fundamental freedoms, access to economic opportunity and good-paying jobs, and threats to our national security.

They have filled this Chamber with culture wars and conspiracies and pushed policies that would hurt our children, families, students, seniors, members of the Armed Forces, and workers. They have turned their backs on our allies: democracies standing in the breach against forces that pose serious threats to our own national security. They have wasted days, weeks, and months with cheap political stunts all to the detriment and on the dime of our constituents.

Congress is supposed to work for the people, and this is not what the people sent us here to do.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to put people over politics and to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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