Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as the pandemic began, Congress, on a bipartisan basis, made sure our schools and our summer meal programs had easy-to-use flexibilities so they could continue to feed hungry children who were no longer physically in school or no longer able to go to a meal site in the summer because of COVID. All across America now, because of a lot of hard work on a lot of people's part, our kids are now back in school, which is great. But 90 percent of our schools are still struggling to provide children healthy food as a result of higher food prices, less available staff, and more supply chain delays and shortages that we know about all the time. In fact, part of that relates to this bill which was just passed on shipping. This is part of the supply chain breakdown that has affected the ability for our schools to be able to get what they need for our children. We have 90 percent--all this in red, across the country--of the States saying: We need these flexibilities that have been in place from the very beginning of COVID. We extended the flexibilities before, and they need them to continue to be able to feed children in our country. School cafeterias, summer meal providers--everybody is working as hard as they can to get back to normal, but they need time to transition so our children aren't hurt in the process. The USDA, school administrators, local mayors, even school food suppliers themselves have said they need these flexibilities to continue for another year.…”