Marcy Kaptur: “I must rise reluctantly to oppose this rule. We did go before the Committee on Rules to try to get the permission to…”

“I must rise reluctantly to oppose this rule. We did go before the Committee on Rules to try to get the permission to offer amendments here on the floor today. We were refused. I wanted to go through a few of those amendments that we believe are worthy and would make this a much better bill. Probably one of the most important is the Global Food for Education initiative inspired by the work of Senators Bob Dole and George McGovern. It takes our school lunch program from this country and extends its concept abroad, using food to help over 9 million needy children in 38 countries to both promote their education and help them develop fully by having decent nutrition. We very much want to continue this program. We really believe that we allowed ourselves to become bottled up by artificial budget rules that prevented us from going on record to do what is right in this current bill. We would very much like to have this Global Food for Education program extended directly by Congress as a part of the regular order in this appropriation bill.”