Jahana Hayes

As Chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, I recognize that the challenges to meet the many needs facing this country are great.

So, the idea that Democrats are OK with schools being closed is just a false choice.

I was pushing for schools to reopen safely and for us to make sure that funding levels would not be cut so that social workers and support service personnel, and all of those people that are necessary to meet students who are returning…

I think it`s a more dangerous precedent to let members` violent rhetoric and their hateful words go unchecked.

I vote for the babies who left for school eight years ago and never returned home and the teachers who died trying to protect them.

We have kids who are not in school--not that I think it probably is that bad because you don't allow us to put nutritious food into schools--but we want less government.

I just hope that in the next phase, or even moving forward, that, now that we have seen it, and we have experienced it, that we can work hard to mitigate the problem and ensure it doesn't happen again.

The Farmers to Families Food Box Program was billed as a solution to this pressing issue.

COVID-19 has decimated our economy, and further destabilized Americans' steady access to nutritious meals.

I can assure you, everyone on this committee, when my husband was diagnosed with COVID-19... I thought about my husband getting healthy.

You know, it would be nice if sometimes they would listen to what Black people actually think and not know what is best for us all of the time.

It ought to be interesting to me that Dr. Foxx and Mr. Walberg--I wonder if they are watching all the people marching in the streets today.

We need to do the same thing for public education.

I remind you that it is just geography, and we can still continue this work.

Generally, 2 1/2 years later is 2 1/2 years too late.

And, unfortunately, the research shows that unlicensed care is often the only affordable care or available option for many low-income families.

Since the establishment of this program we have fed more than 40 million children in 41 countries.

Right now in many of those countries that I visited, I see how drought has caused food shortages, jeopardizing school meals for more than 800,000 children.

I have spoken on many occasions about my commitment to ensuring that all children receive healthy meals, because I have been on the other side of a classroom where a kid returned on a Monday morning having not eaten, with their head on a…

I urge my colleagues to consider the cost of not educating 7 percent of our population.

No child or human being is illegal. As leaders, we should refrain from using such language when referencing the status of an individual, especially a child.

But we could have helped you with those challenges had we had the information.

I just find it very difficult to believe that the Department of Labor can't come up with a system by which we are pulling this apart.

I think a lot of what you have heard today and a lot of the concerns of my colleagues are that congressionally appropriated funds... have now been shifted to support programs like IRAPs.

I am assuming that you cannot say that there is comparable data that says that IRAPs have the same salary post-graduation as apprenticeship programs.