Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, while I appreciate my colleague's interest in ensuring children in childcare have access to healthy and fresh foods whenever possible, this amendment, unfortunately, as written, could wind up doing more harm than good.

Childcare has been underfunded for decades, leading to an inadequate supply of programs, high costs to families, and low wages for providers.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, only 15 percent of federally eligible children currently receive subsidies under the childcare and development fund, and many more don't even qualify for the fund who actually need the assistance.

That is why I introduced, with the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Lee) the Childcare for Working Families Act which would make historic investments in childcare to raise the pay and improve access to families.

This amendment submitted by the gentlewoman from Washington requires the Secretaries of Health and Human Services and Agriculture to ``update relevant nutrition and food safety and preparation regulations and guidelines'' that are related to nutrition and food safety preparation in childcare facilities.

This amendment provides broad discretion for the Secretaries to usurp State and local food safety guidelines. If States don't conform their childcare regulations to whatever the Secretaries deem appropriate, they could lose funding which, as I indicated, is already inadequate.

There are no real guardrails to the scope of the changes that the Secretaries could propose under the amendment. States could be punished if they do not adopt the same standards as mandated by the Secretaries.

This amendment, therefore, is too broad, allows too much discretion to an administration which has already shown its willingness to cancel or freeze funding for social service programs in Democratic States.

For these reasons, Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment and urge my colleagues to do the same.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Other than to say that that assumes that the Federal regulations that they come up with will be better than what they have already come up with. This could be worse, could be better. The problem is, if you don't actually comply, you could lose your funding. I think that would be a step backward, so I would hope we would oppose the amendment as it is written.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, the assumption is that regulations that these Secretaries will get together and provide will be better than what is already there. We don't know what they are going to come up with. We do know, however, that if the State, if the local people don't comply exactly with those regulations, they are going to lose funding. There is broad discretion on the Secretaries, and as I have said, these Secretaries have been known to cancel programs in Democratic States. I don't think that broad discretion is appropriate. I would hope we would defeat the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

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