Lincoln pushes child-nutrition bill

— With the number of legislative days dwindling, U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln ramped up her efforts Tuesday to get a stalled child nutrition bill included on the busy Senate schedule before the programs expire in September.

It was the second time in less than a week that Lincoln, a Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, sought to force votes on key farm and food issues before Congress leaves for its annual August recess.

On Thursday night, Lincoln held up floor action to secure an agreement to include $1.5 billion in agricultural disaster assistance in a small-business bill that could come up for a vote as early as today.

But the child nutrition bill - which passed the Agriculture Committee unanimously and which has the bipartisan backing of at least 53 senators - is still not scheduled for consideration. The programs it covers, set to expire Sept. 30, include school lunches and breakfasts, after-school and summer-feeding programs, and the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly known as WIC.

So Lincoln took to the floor Tuesday afternoon to make her case in a 15-minute speech.

“I will relentlessly be pursuing my colleagues,” she said. “I know they get tired of me and I know I’ve become a pest, but let me tell you - when the day is done and we have finished our work here, it is worthwhile to have been a pest for something that is such a great treasure to this nation as our children.”

Lincoln added that she would “continue to come down to the floor of the United States Senate” until the bill is passed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada told reporters “it would be nice if we could do something with child nutrition. We're going to try to do that.”

The legislation - sponsored by Lincoln and called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act - is designed to increase participation in existing food programs, improve the nutritional quality of school lunches and help reduce childhood obesity. It would boost spending for the nation’s child nutrition programs by $4.5 billion over 10 years and is paid for with cuts to other agriculture programs.

The legislation would increase the federal school lunch reimbursement rate paid to schools for the first time since 1973. It also would establish national school nutrition standards, including regulating what goes into all vending machines and what is sold in all lunch lines.

The bill is patterned after similar programs already in place in Arkansas, Lincoln said, and would “bring some Arkansas wisdom to the rest of the country.”

Lincoln forced action on the agriculture disaster aid after she brought Senate proceedings to halt for about two hours Thursday night. The funding had been passed earlier this year by both the House and Senate as part of another bill, but dropped during the process to reconcile the two versions.

Lincoln had been trying to add both the disaster aid and the child nutrition funding to a spending bill last week. Both measures are paid for with offsetting cuts in other spending.

But Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc-Connell of Kentucky - who supported the child nutrition measure as a member of the Agriculture Committee - objected to Lincoln’s amendment on procedural grounds. She responded with her own objection - leading to a two-hour delay during which she conferred with Senate leaders.

That led to an agreement to include the disaster funding in a bill aimed at expanding existing government programs for small businesses. That bill is scheduled for debate today, with a final vote possible.

The disaster measure would provide help for Arkansas producers who suffered devastating weather and disastrous crop harvests in 2009, Lincoln said.

Direct crop losses for cotton, cottonseed, corn, rice, soybeans, sorghum and grass hay in Arkansas were estimated by University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture economists to have been $400 million, said Eric Wailes, a UA agricultural economist.

That led to the loss of 3,700 jobs and $102 million in lost wages, Wailes added.

The disaster aid legislation would provide an estimated $1.1 billion in supplemental payments to producers nationwide who suffered crop losses in counties declared “primary” disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The bill also would provide $300 million in assistance for specialty crop producers, $75 million in emergency loans to poultry producers, $50 million in assistance for livestock producers, $25 million in aquaculture assistance and $42 million to aid first handlers of cottonseed.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 07/28/2010

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