I thought I heard a parental "huzzah" go up across the country this week when the Senate passed a sweeping food safety bill that President Obama is expected to sign into law shortly. Over the last year, there have been increasing numbers of frightening news reports about children becoming sick after eating tainted spinach or bad burgers, as well as allegations of food buyers taking bribes to get moldy or otherwise defective food into our supermarkets.
It's been something of a scary time to be the one doing the family food shopping. So fingers crossed that some additional authority for the FDA will mean safer food for our families.
But what good is food safety if there are still tens of thousands of children who go hungry every day in America?
Congress took a big step to change that as well, by passing in this lame duck session the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act -- a law that will provide increased school breakfast programs for poor children, require more nutritional food in school lunches, and make the summer food program stronger so fewer American children would go hungry when school is out of session.
The cost? $4.5 billion dollars. Certainly not chump change. But in my mind, that's money much better spent than the $700 billion of unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy that the GOP leadership is insisting on that will crank our country's deficit even further into the stratosphere.
But I'm troubled by the back story on these soon-to-be laws -- the GOP tried to block both with procedural tactics and tricks. They are so focused on getting rid of President Obama at any cost that they are willing to block every bill sponsored by the Democrats, even if it means doing it on the backs of our children.
The Republican leadership has made no secret of the fact that their sole mission over the next two years is to make sure Barack Obama and George H.W. Bush share the same footnote in history -- that they were one-term presidents.
I just want to know how the likes of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Eric Cantor can sleep at night knowing that they've even attempted to make hungry kids and children sickened by bad food the new political pawns in their game for power.
Image via marnanel/Flickr
Moms Love Birthday Parties, Too!
Father Knows Best - Happy Father's Day!
Are Cheaters Entitled to Privacy? - A...
Road Trips Make Mommies Wild!
Comments 27
I'm thinking at some point, the Dems need to call the GOPs bluff, but it's got to be on something big like unemployment benefits. These people really want to hold up unemployment so they can give rich people a tax break. Uhm, yeah that's really what the American people want. Pfft! They may think they so, until it happens.
Then it will be akin to shutting down the government back in the 90s. We all know how that turned out.
I think Boener and his cronies are just too far detached from these issues--the phrase, "I got mine, Jack," comes to mind. These guys don't live with the every-day issues of how to feed your children good healthy food and still pay for childcare, the mortgage and utilities.
Can someone please tell me how the Federal Government and this bill is suddenly going to make food at your local public school healthier? Did there used to be food delivered in locked bins, and the employees at the school not allowed to inspect it before it was shoved down the throats of the poor little children?
Where is the local responsibility? Nobody, anywhere, ever said that local school districts could not set standards for the food that they serve. If they were getting bad/moldy/unacceptable food, WHY DIDN'T THEY SEND IT BACK? Why does it take the action of Congress to do this?
Honestly, I don't have a problem with feeding kids good food. But I truly believe that job rests with parents, and not with schools. Providing your child with a healthy brown-bag meal each day is not difficult, nor is it expensive. I do it every day. There's fresh fruit in there, whole grain bread, lean protein.
I get that *some* children come from profoundly poor homes, but I do NOT believe that it is in the numbers that we are told. Further, those families can find help through WIC and other programs - which brings us right back to the brown-bag deal. These families already get money to purchase healthy food for their children.
continued...
In our current economic climate, I don't think we should be spending ANY MORE money! Not on school lunches, not on the military. Those "tax cuts for the wealthy" hold the potential for creating many new jobs because the "wealthy" are many of the ones who are running small to medium sized businesses, and they are not hiring because of all of the new taxes and regulations placed upon them by this administration (hello, health care bill).
It's time that we realize that the government is not our mommy. WE are the parents. WE are the ones responsible for our children's diets, NOT MICHELLE OBAMA. If your school is feeding crappy food to your kids, GO TO THE SCHOOL AND FIX IT. Stop relying of the Government to do everything for you! Have we learned NOTHING from the recent TSA controversy?
The more power you surrender to the government, the more they will take. It's as simple as that.
No money for children who go hungry every day. That's pretty harsh.
As for school lunches, that's great that some of you are able to afford healthy food and produce for your children. Many families are not and things like fresh fruits and vegetables are a luxury. I hope you're never in that situation or come from a family where you're lucky if you're trying to stretch a loaf of white bread and brick of Velveeta cheese to feed your kids lunch, hoping that they'll get something extra a school.
"Many families are not and things like fresh fruits and vegetables are a luxury. " Really? Every grocery store, and nearly every convenience store I walk into has fresh fruits and veggies of some kind available. My local gas station regularly has bananas for $.49 a pound. Are you telling me that all of those financially poor families that receive welfare and WIC can't afford bananas?
I've just gone through a grocery store flyer, looking at the prices. Here's what I found:
Whole wheat bread, 2/$4; peanut butter, 2/$3; jelly/preserves, 3/$5; bananas, $.29/lb; apples, $.68/lb; clementines (mandarin oranges), $1.00/lb; carrots, $.88/lb. And then I did some math for you. To buy the ingredients for a healthy kid's lunch, you'd need a loaf of bread, pb&j, a pound of apples, and a pound of carrots. The total came to $6.66, without tax. That set of ingredients can be stretched for WEEKS. I've just fed a kid (and yes, that's what I send my kid to school with in his lunch), for SEVERAL WEEKS with less than a ten dollar bill. Are you telling me that there are families out there - who receive Welfare or WIC (because that's who we're talking about, right?) who can't find $10?
And FYI? I AM in a situation where I have to stretch my loaves of bread and my jars of peanut butter. That's how I know that others can do it too.
"These food service contracts are so... "bureaucratized" shall we say, at the State level. With so many "dirty hands" at the capital on down "the food chain"..."
And adding MORE BUREAUCRACY is going to fix that, how?
If there is corruption at the local level, adding MORE corruption is NOT going to fix the problem!! How can you not see that? If your local school board is effed up, VOTE THEM OUT. If your state Board of Education is effed up... VOTE THEM OUT!
Don't just sit there and wring your hands, and sanctimoniously say, "There, the Federal Government is going to make it ALL better!!" Because they're NOT. Everything the government puts its paws into gets worse. Get your head out of the sand and start taking some individual responsibility.
Yes, PonyChaser, as a matter of fact I am saying that. Because families have many more financial obligations like, say, mortgages and rent, utility bills, car payments, insurance payments. I have several family members who have at points in their lives not been able to afford the luxury of fresh fruits and vegetables, having to opt for canned or frozen (which you can't put in lunches) because you get larger amounts of food for less money. This is exactly the kind of thinking that I believe the GOP leadership has -- there are people who just can't fathom that there are families who can't afford things like that. I was lucky -- my parents are farmers and worked ourside jobs, as well. We grew as much of our food as possible -- if we hadn't, we would not have had fresh produce on our table. It was a "treat" to buy a head of lettuce.
As for the quality of food, I have seen firsthand the warehouses of cheap processed cheese and other bulk products our schools get.
No need to outline your grocery budget as a way of lecturing people -- my family couldn't afford whole wheat bread, either. I know we weren't the only ones.