WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- Passage of a child nutrition bill now before Congress will ultimately take food from the mouths of children, an official said.
Lawmakers are under pressure to clear a Senate-passed $4.5 billion childhood nutrition bill championed by Arkansas's Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, but critics said it would cut funding for food stamps, and that would end up hurting children, Washington's The Hill reported.
The Senate bill expands eligibility for school meal programs, sets nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools, and provides a 6-cent increase for each school lunch to help schools serve healthier meals, the report said.
Many House Democrats prefer an $8 billion bill sponsored by Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, a California Democrat, and oppose paying for it by ending the expansion of food stamp benefits in last year's Recovery Act six months sooner than expected, the report said.
"George Orwell would appreciate the irony: The child nutrition bill that could come up for a vote in the House as early as this week would actually take food from the mouths of children," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center.
Weill said cutting food stamp benefits early to help pay for the child nutrition bill would cut $59 from a family of four's food budget, the newspaper said.
Last month several dozen Democrats wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., condemning the Senate child nutrition bill.
"This is one of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul," they wrote, "and is a vote we do not take lightly."
