Thank you for holding this important hearing on child nutrition.  We are all very grateful for the strong commitment to child nutrition shown by the distinguished chairman and the ranking member of this Committee.

 In fact, this Committee has a long and honorable tradition of responding to the neediest Americans.  A tradition of leaders like Senator Dole, Senator McGovern, and Senator Humphrey have championed the needs of our hungry.  And 31 years ago, when my father called attention to silent poverty in America, it was this Committee that repsonded with speed and compassion.

 Mr. Chairman, it truly is the best of times and the worst of times in some of our communities.  We’re all very familiar with the headlines--new stock market records almost daily, rock bottom interest rates, and the lowest unemployment in 24 years.

 Yet just this past Tuesday, Second Harvest, a national anti-hunger group, announced some disturbing findings about emergency food programs across the country.  While our unemployment lines have been shrinking, the lines at our food pantries and soup kitchens have not.  While more people than ever are working, more working people are relying on charity to feed their families.

 And the desperate folks who are visiting those feeding programs aren’t who you might expect.  Over half of them are from non-urban areas.  Two-thirds of the adults are women.  And tragically, over one-third of their clients are children.

 In fact, the USDA found last fall that 800,000 American households with children encounter severe hunger.  In my home state of Massachusetts, some 62,000 children encounter hunger each year, and 15,000 homes live with severe hunger.

 In fact, just one week before Christmas I visited a clinic at Boston Medical Center where a pediatrician named Deborah Frank works.  Dr. Frank told me that she had seen 22 malnourished children that morning--on a routine day in a Boston hospital.

 So during the past few months I have looked long and hard at the problem of child hunger in Massachusetts.  I’ve traveled around the state, visiting food pantries and soup kitchens and food banks.

 I’ve met with our community leaders in big cities and small towns to ask why on earth there are hungry children among this seemingly endless prosperity.

 And everywhere I hear the same response:  More than ever, it’s working families who just can’t make ends meet.

 The math is pretty stark.  If you work at the minimum wage or a little better, you’re making $11,000 or $12,000 a year.  In most working class neighborhoods in Boston, you’ve got to pay rent of at least $800 or $900 a month.  Add in monthly heating bills, transportation, child care, and maybe a car repair or medical bill.  It must be almost impossible to squeeze in three square meals through the whole month.

 And the saintly people who work in those soup kitchens and shelters are bracing for a long and cold winter next year when the new welfare time limits kick in.

 I was in Chicago recently and learned that the job market there has about 47,000 openings.  But to accomodate every family who will need to work to avoid losing food stamps, Chicago needs 197,000 jobs.

 I’m not asking for us to revisit the welfare reform debate now.  We’ve fought that out.  But we should be able to agree on one thing:  No matter what mistakes a parent may have made, whether they have a drug problem or anything else we might condemn, children should never go hungry, period.

 This Committee holds the key to one of the most powerful tools we have to combat child hunger.  It’s our school breakfast program, and the link between breakfast and student performance is growing clearer and clearer.

 But Mr. Chairman, 60 percent of our low-income kids cannot or do not participate in the breakfast program.  That’s 8.8 million kids who get free or reduced price lunches but get nothing for breakfast at school.

 We know we can begin to reach those kids by lifting the stigma attached to the income tests for school breakfast.  In a pilot program in Minnesota, schools that made breakfast universal saw an increase in test scores.  In Philadelphia and Baltimore, free breakfast programs doubled the number of kids who eat breakfast, raised math scores, cut tardiness, and reduced disciplinary problems.

 Given the critical link between nutrition and learning, breakfast is as important a part of the school day as buses, books, or blackboards.  We should provide this critical learning aid to every kid in America, regardless of income.  We don’t means test books.  We don’t means test the morning bus ride.  And if a means test is keeping kids out of the breakfast room, we should stop means testing school breakfast as well.

 I know how committed the leaders of this committee are to these programs.  And I know well that you are up against tight budget caps.  But in this time of enormous prosperity, we have got to find a way to include those who have been left out.

 We balanced the budget by cutting $54 billion out of welfare programs, mostly food aid. The GAO reports it would cost $2.1 billion over the next 5 years to lift the eligibility requirements for school breakfast.  I cannot believe that we can’t spend the few billion it would take to put up a safety net for our most vulnerable children.

 The welfare reform law reduced summer lunch program subsidies and wiped out the authorization for startup and expansion grants for the breakfast and summer programs.  As a result, GAO found the summer program is serving less food at fewer locations.

 Only 15% of the low-income kids who attend school lunch get meals in the summer time.  That means 12.5 million kids who rely on free or reduced price lunches have nowhere to turn during the long summer months.

 Mr. Chairman, let’s reinstate those important grants that allow schools and non-profits to offer children a safe and healthy place to get a meal during the summer months.

 And let’s lift the eligibility requirement for our youngest shool children to get breakfast at school.  If we have to fight a budget battle for those resources, let’s fight that battle.  But we owe it to our children to make sure they’re ready to learn and ready to thrive.