HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET HOLDS A HEARING ON FIGHTING HUNGER AND INVESTING IN CHILDREN

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

SPEAKERS: REP. JOHN M. SPRATT JR., D-S.C. CHAIRMAN REP. DENNIS MOORE, D-KAN. REP. ROSA DELAURO, D-CONN. REP. CHET EDWARDS, D-TEXAS REP. BRIAN BAIRD, D-WASH. REP. JIM COOPER, D-TENN. REP. ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, D-PA. REP. MARCY KAPTUR, D-OHIO REP. XAVIER BECERRA, D-CALIF. REP. LLOYD DOGGETT, D-TEXAS REP. EARL BLUMENAUER, D-ORE. REP. MARION BERRY, D-ARK. REP. ALLEN BOYD, D-FLA. REP. JIM MCGOVERN, D-MASS. REP. ROBERT E. ANDREWS, D-N.J. REP. ROBERT C. SCOTT, D-VA. REP. BOB ETHERIDGE, D-N.C. REP. TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, D-N.Y. REP. GWEN MOORE, D-WIS. REP. NIKI TSONGAS, D-MASS.

REP. PAUL D. RYAN, R-WIS. RANKING MEMBER REP. JO BONNER, R-ALA. REP. SCOTT GARRETT, R-N.J. REP. J. GRESHAM BARRETT, R-S.C. REP. MARIO DIAZ-BALART, R-FLA. REP. JEB HENSARLING, R-TEXAS REP. DAN LUNGREN, R-CALIF. REP. PATRICK T. MCHENRY, R-N.C. REP. CONNIE MACK, R-FLA. REP. K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, R-TEXAS REP. MIKE SIMPSON, R-IDAHO REP. JOHN CAMPBELL, R-CALIF. REP. PAT TIBERI, R-OHIO REP. RODNEY ALEXANDER, R-LA. REP. ADRIAN SMITH, R-NEB. REP. CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, R-WYO.

WITNESSES: SHARON PARROTT, DIRECTOR, WELFARE REFORM AND INCOME SUPPORT DIVISION, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES

DEBORAH FRANK, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, CHILDREN'S SENTINEL NUTRITION ASSESSMENT PROGRAM AND THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM, BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER

LEON LOTT, SHERIFF, RICHLAND COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA

DOUGLAS BESHAROV, SENIOR SCHOLAR, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

[*] SPRATT: I'll call the hearing to order. Today we meet to consider a part -- an important part of the federal budget that -- a topic that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. Investments in fighting hunger and investments in children are the right things to do in the short term. No question about it. But there are also prudent, wise investments over the long term because, without adequate funding, our society and our budgets pay a price that's higher later and if it's avoided now.

It's easy to say that our children are our future, but harder to make the hard choices about what works and where you come up with the resources to fund what we know needs to be done.

I hope our witnesses today, drawing on their research and their personal experience, can help up set out priorities and help us to invest wisely.

I want to thank Mr. McGovern of Massachusetts for asking that we hold this hearing. He's been a national leader in efforts to fight hunger and support efforts to address the problem.

Rather than make an extended opening statement, I am going to yield the balance of my time to him to make his opening statement.

Then I'll yield to Mr. Ryan to say any quick -- any remarks he would like to make.

We'll then hear from our witnesses, Sharon Parrot, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Deborah Frank, of the Growth Clinic and for Children's in Boston; Sheriff Leon Lott, from Richland County, South Carolina; and Douglas Besharov, of the American Enterprise Institute.

I'd like to extend a special welcome to Sheriff Lott from my home state of South Carolina.

He comes from Richland County which adjoins my congressional district. He's here today because he is active with Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a network of law enforcement officials who are dedicated to finding and promoting better ways of reducing crime. He has an impressive record of public service and we're indebted for him for coming today.

Thank you very much, indeed.

Now I yield to Mr. McGovern.

MCGOVERN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank you for holding this important briefing today.

I want to thank the witnesses for their and -- and for their testimony.

I especially want to thank Dr. Deborah Frank, from the Boston Medical Center in the C-SNAP program, for coming.

Her testimony has always been of great value to this Budget Committee in understanding why we need to invest in -- in hunger, nutrition and children's health, so I appreciate it.

And I appreciate all of the witnesses here.

Now, let's be clear today, fighting hunger should not -- should be a top priority of this Congress and this new administration.

Whenever we talk about improving the lives of children, about giving them better health care and education, we must also talk about ending hunger.

Ending hunger is not quixotic endeavor. Many of my colleagues may be shocked to hear this from a guy whose last name is McGovern, but President Nixon did more to combat hunger than any other president. Although, I hope that will change with President Obama.

In fact, we were on track to end hunger in the 1970s before many of the most important anti-hunger programs were slashed during the Reagan era.

More than 36 million people went hungry in America in 2007. Over 12 million of them were children. This is unacceptable. And it is time that we make the critical investments in programs that are proven to combat hunger -- to combat and end hunger.

According to a 2007 study commissioned by the Sodexo Foundation, more than $90 billion is spent each year on addressing the direct and indirect costs related to individuals and families who simply don't have enough to eat. This means that every single person in the United States pays about $300 annually towards covering this hunger bill, and $22,000 over a life time.

In 2005, direct and indirect costs for illness alone were $66.8 billion.

And I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the report the report by this -- by Sodexo.

But the cost of any hunger is much less expensive than the cost of doing nothing. The same study estimates that we could end hunger by simply strengthening existing, not new, federal nutrition programs by about $10 billion to $12 billion over current spending.

Specifically, we must provide breakfast to every child at school and do so after the school day starts. School meals should be provided to all children at no cost. And the meals should be healthier.

We must also ensure that all children who receive a meal during the school year are able to eat during the summer months when school isn't in session.

We also need to make sure that WIC is fully funded and that every eligible family is signed up for and receiving proper food stamp benefits.

President Obama has committed to ending childhood hunger by the year 2015. Our budget must reflect that.

And I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, members of this committee and with this administration on this important investment in our children's future.

All of us in Congress talk the talk. Quite frankly -- but quite frankly, we haven't always walked the walk. I have yet to meet anybody in Congress who is pro-hunger. Yet, a lot of the budgets that we have passed over the years, a lot of the appropriations bills that we have passed over the years do not reflect this commitment to ending hunger.

This is the time to develop a comprehensive plan to end hunger and insist on its implementation.

Let me be clear. Our goal should not be to simply hand out food. Though now, unfortunately, that is necessary. Our goal should be to increase each individual's purchasing power so that every person has access to enough healthy food to feed them and their families. And ultimately, that means an all-out attempt, an all-out effort to end poverty in this country.

We have a long way to go. We have ignored this problem for far too long.

And I hope that today is the beginning of -- of a new era in which we will build on some of the successes that we have -- we have already had.

In the stimulus package that we are going to vote on, there is a significant increase in monies for food stamps, which is a good thing.

In the Farm Bill that we passed last year, though there are lots of parts of the Farm Bill I don't like, the food and the nutrition part I do like. And there's a $20 billion commitment to new food nutrition programs.

And I want to specifically thank my colleague from Connecticut, Rosa DeLauro, for her -- for her efforts in that.

But we are playing catch up. And we need to go beyond that and into a -- and into devising and implementing a comprehensive plan to end hunger once and for all.

And I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to make this opening statement.

And I yield back the balance of my time.

SPRATT: Thank you, Mr. McGovern.

Mr. Ryan?

RYAN: Thank you, Chairman.

And welcome, witnesses. Our focus today is on American families struggling in this severely weakened economy, and specifically the children of those families.

The most obvious and I know the well-intentioned response is to increase the size and scope of nearly every program that's already on the books and likely even add a few more.

But what always seems to come as an afterthought, if ever at all, is what all these well-intentioned actions will mean for the future of those same children Congress is today aiming to help.

CBO tells us the deficit this year will be $1.2 trillion. And that's before taking into account this so-called stimulus legislation we're voting on today or tomorrow.

Compounding this is an entitlement crisis looming on the horizon.

So I think if we're talking about a hearing about the future of children, the condition of children, this has got to be a part of this conversation.

Today, the government has an unfunded liability of $56 trillion, or about $185,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States of America. And that gap between what we've promised and what we can actually deliver is growing by an incredible $2 trillion to $3 trillion per year. What does this mean for our children's future?

According to the GAO, by the time today's 5-year-olds hit their mid-30s, they will have to pay twice as much in federal taxes as we do now just to keep our largest entitlements afloat in their current form.

It's important to note that these estimates were produced prior to today's economic crisis and assume no new spending, no new benefits and certainly not the stimulus bill with its hundreds of billions of spending and program expansion.

But if we fail to reform these entitlement programs, we are all but guaranteeing an economic crisis for our children.

There will be, as OMB Director Peter Orszag said to this committee last September, substantially more severe than what we are even facing today.

Failing to address the entitlement crisis will also mean that our three largest entitlements, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, alone, will grow to consume the size of the entire federal budget today and crowd out every other domestic priority, including early childhood education and the 21 existing food subsidy programs on the books today.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Congress throws up its hands and says the challenges are too great, the debt's too large, there's nothing that we can do to help those who are in need today. Congress has already taken extraordinary steps to -- to address the economic crisis, including the bipartisan passage of measures such as temporary extension of unemployment benefits to cushion struggling families from the serious economic downturn.

If you could bring up chart one, please.

Let's look at food stamps as another example.

Since 2000, we've more than double the size of this program. According to the Congressional Budget Office, food stamp spending will increase by 22 percent this year along. And that increase jumps to 34 percent with the stimulus bill passing.

But we simply cannot pretend that the answer to every question and every challenge is always just more spending.

At best, the government's well-intentioned efforts to help the vulnerable have a mixed record of success. And in too many cases, have simply trapped their beneficiaries in a cycle of dependency while adding to our already crushing burden of debt.

Instead of simply racing to do something for struggling families, let's try to do something that uses the lessons of the past and actually betters their prospects for the future.

We all know the elements of this. We've got to get our economy back on track now. And that means encouraging the investment in job creation critical to get the people kids look to to provide for them, their parents, back to work.

That means we've got to remove tax hikes that, in less than two years, will hit workers, businesses and families.

And equally important, this means beginning to address immediately the looming entitlement crisis that we can give the next generation an even better America than that which our parents passed to us.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I yield.

SPRATT: Thank you, Mr. Ryan.

I think the committee members have pretty well set the bookends for this argument today. And there's a lot of room between us to argue and consider what is doable, feasible, and what is necessary in this critically important area.

I would like to attend to a couple of housekeeping details.

First of all, I ask unanimous consent that all members be allowed to submit at this point an opening statement for the record.

If there's no objection, so order. Now, to our committee -- to our -- to our panel of witnesses, thank you for coming, thank you for the efforts you've put into coming. We've got your testimony. We'll make it a part of the record so that you can summarize it. But we've got one panel this morning, I believe, and take your time and explain your position because we'll then have questions for you after.

Thank you again for coming. We look forward to your testimony.

And we'll begin with Sharon Parrott, who is the director of Welfare Reform and Income Support Division for the Center -- at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ms. Parrott?

PARROTT: (OFF-MIKE)

SPRATT: How about checking your mike and see if it's on, please. And pull it forward a -- just a bit, if you don't mind.

PARROTT: OK. Is that better?

SPRATT: That's better.

PARROTT: Oh, that's much better.

Thank you once again.

I'm going to focus my remarks here this morning on the current economic downturn, its impacts on poverty and families, and the recovery package. And I'm happy in the question period to talk more about the longer term.

First the bad news. I don't have to tell you that the current recession already has pushed the unemployment rate from 4.9 percent in December 2007 to 7.6 percent in January 2009. We are nearly to an unemployment rate that represents the very highest unemployment rate in the recession of the early 1990s.

Alternative measures of labor market -- of the labor market paints an even bleaker picture. Almost one in seven workers is either unemployed, involuntarily working part time, or is jobless, willing to work but has become discouraged from looking for work, typically after being unsuccessful for many weeks.

Private and government payrolls have combined -- combined, have shrunk for 13 straight months, and net job losses since the recession 3.6 million.

Driving joblessness leads to increases in poverty. It happens in every recession. Not only does poverty go up, but people lose health insurance and hardship woes.

While the census data on the most recent changes in poverty won't be available for some time, we have other indicators that unfortunately already point to a rise in poverty. The clearest such indicator is a dramatic increase in recent months in the food stamp caseload.

Between December 2007 and November 2008 caseloads rose by 3.5 million people or 13 percent. In 28 states, at least one in every five children now receives food stamps. And about 30 million Americans now need help from the Food Stamps Program to buy groceries.

In another indication of rising poverty and hardship, data from various sources show that homelessness is on the rise among families with children in many parts of the county.

One in five school districts that responded to a recent national survey reporting having more homeless children in the fall of 2008 than they saw over the entire 2007 and 2008 school years. Schools have to track homeless because there are particular services they provide them, so it provides a very good source of data.

A number of cities have reported increases in families seeking shelter.

The housing market's ongoing troubles heighten the potential for rising homelessness. Home foreclosures have pushed many owners into the rental market, and it left many renters without a place to live when their properties that they live in -- and they may be fully up to -- fully current in their own rent payments -- when those units are foreclosed on, they're often tossed out.

That's driving up rental costs in some markets and making it difficult for people to secure affordable housing.

In addition, a number of states and localities are beginning to cut back on homelessness prevention programs due to very serious budget shortfalls at the state and local level.

Using the historical relationship between poverty and unemployment we estimate that if the unemployment rate rises to 9 percent, as has been projected by Goldman Sachs in prior week, the number of poor Americans will rise above its 2006 level by between 7.5 and 10 million. And the number of poor children will rise between 2.6 and 3.3 million children.

In addition to pushing up unemployment and poverty, the recession is also wreaking havoc on state budgets by shrinking revenues and raising costs.

We estimate that the cumulative state deficits for the rest of 2009 and next state fiscal years are a cumulative total of $350 billion. And this excludes the large deficits that many local governments are also facing.

As state budget holes have opened up, states already are having to make very painful budget cuts.

Just a couple of examples: At least 28 states have proposed or eliminated cuts that will reduce low-income children's or families' eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services. At least 26 states have proposed or implemented cuts in K through 12 or early education.

At least 22 states have proposed or implemented cuts to medical rehabilitative home care and other services needed by low-income people who are elderly and who have disabilities.

And at least 32 states have proposed or implemented cuts in public universities and colleges.

Cuts like these ripple through the economy, worsening the downturn. When states and localities reduce funding for schools, or scale back day programs for the frail elderly or cut back on child care programs, this shrinks overall demand for the products and services that public and private entities provide. This results in the loss of jobs in both the public and private sectors.

But now I want to turn to the good news.

The final economic recovery package, the details of which are now emerging, will ameliorate projected increases in poverty and hardship and help avert some painful cuts in critical services at the state level.

First, by boosting overall demand, the package will reduce projected job loses, which means fewer families will have their jobs lost and fewer will be faced with poverty.

Second, the package targets relief on low-income families hard hit by the downturn and those who have lost their jobs. This relief will help keep some families out of poverty and keep others from falling deeper into poverty.

And third, by keeping fiscal relief to states, the package will help plug gapping holes and forestalls some cuts and tax increases that states otherwise would have to make.

While not perfect, the recovery package is, for the most part, well designed to produced significant stimulus and -- and to produce it as quickly as possible.

It includes high bang-for-the-buck items such as expansions in food stamps and unemployment insurance, provisions that a broad range of economists and the Congressional Budget Office have rated as the most highly simulative forms of spending.

It also includes funding for infrastructure projects, which are highly simulative once under way.

It includes tax cuts, some of which are targeted on low and moderate-income households, who are among the most likely to spend the money and to spend it quickly, thereby boosting aggregate consumer demand in the economy.

It also increases funding for a range of programs, such as education, child are and job training, programs that can spend the money quickly and stimulate demand while also serving a useful public purpose.

These measures will make the current recession less damaging both in economic and in human terms.

The package also includes about $140 billion in fiscal relief for states. This is less than the House package includes, but still a significant amount that will reduce the needs for both cuts and critical services and tax hikes at the state and local level.

However, the overall fiscal relief in the package closes less of states' projected budget deficits over the next two and half years, so tough choices for state policy-makers and painful cuts for families and residents will still be required.

Unfortunately, the final agreement lacks a provision in the House recovery bill to give states the option of providing Medicaid coverage to workers who are laid off during the recession.

Under the standard Medicaid program, unemployed parents typically cannot receive Medicaid coverage unless their income sinks to below half the poverty line. And others workers without children who have been laid off are typically entirely set out of the Medicaid program no matter how poor they are.

Without this provision, large numbers of Americans unfortunately are likely to lose their health care coverage and access to health care coverage in the recession.

Still this package remains a real accomplishment in my view. It reflects the best thinking about what provides the highest bang-for- the-buck stimulus of broad range of economists -- relief for long-term families of the unemployed, fiscal relief for states, infrastructure investment and funding of programs that can spend the money quickly and serve a useful public purpose.

The package, in my view, will provide effective stimulus to an ailing economy and will push back against a rising tide of poverty and hardship.

Thanks.

SPRATT: (OFF-MIKE) Deborah Frank, who is the director of the -- well, who's a professor of pediatrics at Boston University, a graduate of Harvard Medial School and director of the Growth Clinic at the Boston Medical School in Boston.

Thank you for coming again. We look forward to your testimony.

FRANK: Distinguished chairman and committee members, I was honored to speak before you two years ago. And I am really grateful that you give me an opportunity to again speak on behalf of all children and particularly the quietest and most invisible victims of the recession or the youngest children.

Since I last spoke, there have been some important policy advances, particularly Farm Bill funding for the low-income energy assistance, on (inaudible) the year food stamps will -- now called SNAP -- will get more money because, heaven knows, it's needed.

But, alas, I must tell you that the plague of inadequate nutrition and its consequences for our young families has so far outstripped the availability of treatment and prevention. Most of the data that all of us will give you today is really out of date because it was collected before the current recession, but I can tell you from up-to-the-minute clinical experience that the grim economic news is reflected daily in my clinical practice and supported by research that my colleagues and I have conduct as part of C-SNAP, which we're going to Children's HealthWatch, so as not to get it muddled up with SNAP, the Food Stamp Program.

I really sort of want to share experiences from the trenches of clinical care. Just -- it was hard for me to get away because just, since August, my colleagues and I have had to hospitalize 12 severely malnourished babies all under a year of age, which is double the number in the preceding 12 months before August.

Let me just tell you about one of -- his name -- let's call him Joey.

His father is a skilled construction worker, who, whenever there is work, travels around the country with crews that install dry wall. His mother used to have a job in retail but, 12 months we get Joey, she was laid off.

And nevertheless, she stuck with her prenatal care and she was on WIC and she delivered a big, healthy seven-pound baby.

Then, soon after that, the father couldn't find any work as the economy brought construction to a halt. So the family had to leave their market rent apartment and crowd five people into the living room of a not very welcoming relative. These kids are not reflected in the homeless statistics. We call them the hidden homeless. They're not in the shelter system. They're not in motels. They're not counted in street surveys, but there are lots of them.

Joey's mother was breastfeeding and she lost her milk because of the stress. There was a muddle because WIC couldn't change her vouchers for a month. And when I met him at five months of age he only weighed nine pounds. That's two pounds over his birth weight, the weight of a normal one month old. And he was by third degree malnourished by any international criteria you could name, looking like an overseas relief poster.

He had gotten diarrhea from his big sister who went to school. And she recovered but he didn't because his immune system malnutrition weakens you immune system so much. The more malnourished you become, the weaker the immune system becomes.

Despite that, he still survived, which startled us, because children that are malnourished are not supposed to survive. But he was a baby who was loved and had spent hours being held by his family who were terribly worried about him and their inability to meet his needs. And when we went out and made a home visit, it wasn't just Joey who wasn't getting enough to eat. It turned out the other children were drinking watered-down milk purchased with the family's important but inadequate SNAP benefits -- food stamps -- because most mother's unemployment benefits had totally run out and that was all they had.

Joey had intensive hospital care for thousands of dollars. And he -- he certainly looks a whole lot better. I -- I think when he came in, I was -- I just thought that he might now have lived to be taxed, as Mr. Ryan pointed out when he was 30. In fact, I was pretty worried.

But now at seven months, he weights twelve pounds although he still can't sit up. And this child is sort of the tip of the ice berg of child whose survival is threatened by the current economic conditions.

Now many of the kids who are not as sick as Joey, we treat them as outpatients, but they suffer impairments of their health and their developmental potential.

In 2008, our referral rate of underweight babies to our clinic went up 12 percent and our load -- our referral load is double what it was in 2000.

Now, the -- and you're going -- I'm sure people on the committee and your colleagues will tell me, well, that's very nice, Doctor, but it's all anecdotal. And that's why we do research. And here are a lot of statistics that my colleagues and others have gathers that even very mild food insecurity, without any change in the physical size of the child, and so the children would be unnoticed by their clinicians, is a very measurable of poor health. Hospitalization and developmental delays, at least in the youngest children, and actually also inferred developmental problems through it.

Before the current survey, national surveys, which are only unfortunately current through 2007, show that 11 percent of all adults and 17 percent of all children under 18 were food insecure. Again, that doesn't sound very dire, but I can tell you, our research says that that is a measurable insult to children.

Even more scary, the total number of kids in households who have very low food security, which is now the delicate term that, is used for what the government used to call hunger -- but I gather that's not polite any more -- increased by over 60 percent. And again, the younger the child, the more vulnerable. And households with at least one child younger than age 6, the number more than doubled. So that more than a quarter million -- it's actually like 200 -- almost 300,000 are regularly missing meals.

For your interest, we have appended a chart for the members of the committee showing the 2007 rates for household -- so that's everybody -- and specific data for he kids in the states where we conduct Children's HealthWatch. But the child data is only calculable from government stuff from 2003 to 2005, so it's really out of date. If we look at the first six months of 2008 in the baby world where I work, food and security seems to be up about 34 percent, s we would be hesitant about, you know, those numbers until we get a full year and can analyze them in a multi-varied analysis.

There's been lots more research that says that scientifically food insecurity effects children's developments. We published it in the New York Academy of the Annals -- Annals in the New York Academy of Science, which I'd like to submit, and our report called "Nourishing Development."

Developmental risk is something that is now supposed to be done in all pediatric offices if an eight-item questionnaire, called "The Test," that we do. And it basically refers to slow or unusual developments in speaking, moving or behavior. And it's a very good predictor that a child will have later school problems.

We have shown that even after considerable multiple background characteristics, food insecurity kids under the age of three are 76% percent more likely to be at developmental risks than similar children who are food secure. And underweight children, where it's more severe, are 166% more likely to be at developmental risk.

We know that the developmental effects of poor nutrition in early childhood persists long after the acute nutritional deprivation has been treated. And so that -- because it's very hard to reverse an insult occurring at a time of rapid brain growth. It's sort of like the hardware of the computer. You just end up with less efficient hardware. It's not that it can't work at all, but it's a lot harder to program it when the software works. I think this is head starting things that people will talk about, since children are neither ready to learn in the near term nor ready to earn in adulthood.

Now, this is not a new epidemic, as Representative McGovern pointed out, of nutritional deprivation, ill health and impaired learning, but it is one that has become more virulent.

Besides adequate funding that will support income, as Ms. Parrott reported, targeted nutritional programs such as SNAP and Child Nutrition which nourish children from the womb through high school graduation are essential.

I'd like to submit for the record "The Children's Deficient Forum Statement of Principles" which we signed onto.

We're also going to publish -- but I can't tell you about -- but it's a far-going research on the health and development affects of WIC in the 21st century. And others have good data showing the importance of the meals and how they're feeding (ph). But as with SNAP, to ensure the quality and wide availability of these medicines to the increasing number of children in need, significant new funding will be necessary.

I was interested by Mr. Ryan's chart, because we have lots of data showing that -- that medicine of food stamps doesn't meet anywhere near the full population of eligible children. It -- it's gone up. But in fact -- and the dose is still inadequate. So I don't know whether that food stamp chart was good news or bad news. From my perspective, it was good news, but good enough news.

I know from listening to the news that there is much discussion of entities that, quote, "are too big to fail," but I would suggest to you that our children should are really to important. Their whole life trajectories are being set today in the womb and in the early years of life, and they really can't wait until tomorrow.

Investment in the health and nutrition of our children will have short-term economic benefits as those people spend money for food, but also long-term economic payoffs in terms of decreased health care and special education costs. These were calculated by the colleague, Dr. John Cook, who is an economist. I'm not an economist.

And the long-term benefits to society of course is a more productive and competitive workforce to handle the burdens that Mr. Ryan laid out.

I would think not all economic infrastructure is development to be done with a shovel.

Finally, I want to bring all the complicated numbers and the stuff that we've submitted and that's flying around back to the lives of young children because every number has a name and a face. A few weeks ago, I walked into an exam room and there was a little 3-year- old sitting at our toddler tables eating graham crackers and milk that we raise money to give to your visitors. She looked up at me and she said, "Dr. Fwank (sic), this morning my stomach hurted me." Of course, I immediately went on alert and began to run in my head the differential of hurting stomachs in 3-year-olds. The first thing I knew wasn't, it wasn't appendicitis. Kids with appendicitis don't have (inaudible). But was it this or was it that. And the mother was watching my face, and she saw me sort of thinking about the blood tests and the urines I was going to do. And she looked at me and she said, "Doctor, it was just the hunger that was paining her. She'll be OK now." So hunger hurts. And children who are verbal tell us so.

So I'm here to ask you to do what you can to relieve their pain, not only because doing so will stimulate the economy in the short and long-term, but because it is the right thing to do for our children today, when they are hungry.

Thank you for your attention.

SPRATT: (OFF-MIKE)

Your article from -- (OFF-MIKE)

LOTT: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I am the Sheriff of Richland County, which is in Columbia, South Carolina. It's the largest sheriff's department in South Carolina. I am also the past president of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers' Association and a member of Fright Crime: Invest in Kids, a national, bipartisan, anti-crime organization of 4,500 sheriffs, police chiefs, prosecutors and victims around the nation.

My colleagues and I in law enforcement know that dangerous criminals must be put away. But we have also seen that handcuffs and bars alone will not educe our communities' crime problems.

What we know from our experience, and the research backs it up, that targeted investments in our children can give them a better start in life, so that they don't turn to gangs, drugs, and crime. High- quality, early are and education for at-risk kids can reduce the risk of later crime.

At-risk kids in Chicago, left out of the government-funded Child- Parent Center programs, were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18, according to a study published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association."

Head Start is a federally funded pre--kindergarten program for kids in poverty at a cost of $8,000 per child. Research on the short- term impacts of Head Start has often demonstrated only modest effects. However, given the disadvantages that many poor children face, even these modest improvements are meaningful.

For example, a national randomized controlled trial of Head Start showed that Head Start cut the achievement gap nearly in half for pre- reading skills between Head Start children and the national average for all 3 and 4 year olds.

Far more important is that Head Start had a meaningful impact on children's lives in the long term. For example, one national study found that Head Start increased high school graduations by 7 percent for children in the program compared to their siblings not in the program but in other care, and decreased crime by 8.5 percent.

Head Start already incorporates most of the key quality features, such as appropriate class-size and teacher-student ratios, comprehensive and age-appropriate learning -- early learning standards, related services such as health referrals, and parent coaching.

Under the recent Head Start reauthorization bill a portion of all increased investments in the program will be -- be dedicated to quality improvements which will make the program even stronger, such as require more teachers to have least a Bachelor's Degree, and enhanced curriculum standards. And high-quality early care and education for at-risk kids can save $16 for every dollar spent, including more than $11 in crime saving. These programs work.

But only about half of the eligible poor kids in this country are served by Head Start. Fewer than five in 100 of the eligible infants and toddlers are -- are in early Head Start. And only seven out of 100 kids in eligible low-income families get child care assistance. With the economic recession, more kids are eligible for these programs but unable to access them. And states are cutting back. Early childhood care and funding, education funding gives teachers and staff jobs today, it helps today's parents go to work, and it invests in kids for a better and more crime-free tomorrow.

We understand the final version of the American Recovery and Investment Act includes investment of $4 billion for Head Start, Early Head Start and a child care and Development Block Grant. This will create 60,000 jobs, allow over 110,000 more children to participate in Head Start, and provide child care assistance for 300,000 children.

On behalf of thousands of law enforcement leaders around the nation, I urge Congress to move to final passage that Head Start, Early Head Start and Child Care Funding in the economic recovery package. I also urge this committee to ensure that the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution expressly provides room for the increased investment of $10 billion for quality early care and education to which President Obama has made a strong commitment.

The needs are clear. The results of high-quality programs are clear. Let's work together to keep strengthening the quality of federal programs and meeting more of the needs.

Everyday we're paying the far greater costs of our failure to have met these needs years ago.

I saw some of these failures last Friday. I was an emcee for a beauty pageant at the state prison for juvenile girls. These were seven girls, aged 15 to 17, some white, some black, who were in prison for charges ranging from armed robbery to drug offenses. Almost all of them shared a history of child abuse, single-parent family and truancy. None of the girls had been in preschool. The pageant winner was one of seven children of her mother by multiple fathers, and a father, who has had children with multiple mothers, is now in jail.

Kids don't choose their parents. But we, as a nation, can choose to invest in what works to give these kids a chance in life. Otherwise, they'll pay and we'll pay.

My more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement tell me -- and my 4,500 colleagues nationwide concur -- that we can't afford not to make these crime-fighting investments in kids now.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

SPRATT: Now to round out the testimony is someone with an overview based on years of experience. He is now -- Douglas Besharov is now the senior scholar at the AEI on matters of welfare. And he's also a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

We welcome your testimony, and thank you very much for coming.

BESHAROV: Tank you very much, Mr. Spratt, Mr. Ryan and members of the committee.

I was going to say it's a pleasure and an honor to be here, but as I try to figure out what I would say that would be helpful to your liberations, it was just very difficult.

It's clear that more spending is coming, large amounts of more spending. And there's an argument that. I don't want to talk about, you know, how much more there should be or whatever. What I want to talk about is how I hope that Congress will think about that spending. And for that, I don't think it matters whether you're in the majority or the minority.

So I'm going to try to make four points in the time I have here today. And in doing so, I want to emphasize that I realize these decisions are coming very fast, and probably faster than your staff can up with. And in fact, my impression is a lot of these divisions are coming and being made in other places. Btu let me try it anyway.

Four points I want to mention.

First, as every speaker ha s emphasized, for an increasing number of Americans, unemployment is up, poverty is up, incomes are down. That will inevitably mean an increase in spending of means-tested programs, whether it's food stamps or TANF or whatever, those programs are kind of cyclical. They're designed to increase when the economy goes south. And that's going to happen. Some of those programs are going to need additional cash just to meet their current eligibility roof. So that's going to happen. And that should be a -- easily agreeable on all sides.

But there's something else happening at the same time, which is troubling to me as an outsider. And that is, you can see, in a number of programs, a process of changing the eligibility rules and making more people eligible than the economic situation requires or suggests. Now, I think there's a reason for that and I want to spend a minute on that. But I want to explain what I'm talking about.

Whether it's in TANF or WIC or some of the other programs, we are slowly raising the minimum income for eligibility, so it's not just that more people are eligible. People at higher incomes are becoming eligible for these programs by the same changes that are happen in the stimulus package. And I'm sure that will happen in other packages that move forward.

In some programs, that's appropriate, long over due. In other programs, I think it's inappropriate. TANF is a really good example, I think, of where we are in the process of unwinding our welfare reform.

But I want to explain why I think that's happening in case this change can slow down a little bit to do it the right way.

What we heard today about the worsening conditions of the lower middle class is largely because the existing means testing facing that program don't reach to the economic situation that we're facing today. And that is largely housing costs and the ability to pay for housing.

So what we're seeing is food stamps are being used to fill the gap of a housing market problem or a rental market problem. And we're justifying changes in food stamps, Medicaid and so forth because of this underlying problem in housing. Short term, that might work. Long term, my fear is that we have -- will have ratcheted it up, eligibility for these means-tested programs, and it will be extremely for the Congress to turn that around in two years or four years if it chooses to do so.

If I were being political, I would say this is all happening now very fast, everyone wants it to happen. But at this time -- and this country's really good about second-guessing what the politicians do five years later.

My third point is that when you make these changes in programs, when you add new programs, do it in a way so that they can be undone or changed.

The most striking thing about TARP, right, is that we got $350 billion wrong. Thank goodness -- I don't know what will happen -- the next $300 billion or whatever, we're going to spend a little differently.

When we change social programs, it becomes extremely difficult to go back and say, you know, we didn't do that one right. Instead of using vouchers for food stamps, let's think about cash. A lot of people would like cash for food stamps. That's almost impossible to do because of the vested interests around these programs.

Now, I'm, in effect, speaking generalities here. But I am saying, in effect, as you make these changes, add the exit strategy if you want to have one. Now, some places, you may not want an exit strategy. It may be perfectly appropriate to see major and long- lasting changes in eligibility. And I think we'll see that happen.

The last points that I want to make -- and I tried to mention this in the "New York Times" over the weekend, most of the members of Congress, I think, would like to see changes in certain programs. They might like to see No Child Left Behind changed in one particular way or another. Have higher responsibility for teachers or maybe have more accountability. But they might -- I'd like to see Head Start changed so that instead of those modest results, we have much larger results.

The way it works, as far as I can tell, to get those changes in programs, the reformers have to put money on the table. What's happening in too many programs now is we're putting the money on the table without changing the program. And I get they'll be more money coming down. But $4 billion for the child care program that could use a little bit of reform -- $2 billion or $3 billion for Head Start is only the beginning with now requirements that the program improve its performance?

This, it seems to me, is something where both sides ought to be able to fashion these packages to make -- to do two things at once. More money is going to go in. That's what elections are about. The majority is the majority. But the money ought to be spent more wisely than it's currently being spent. And I think the only issue with that is the speed at which all of this is happening. And I'm not standing here saying, oh, it's down. It's all going to happen. But as -- when you have a chance, do ask the question, "Well, as we're putting an extra billion dollar in this program, what's the reform agenda from the left and the right." Not just from the right, what the reform agenda that people, not AEI, but from academia has said should be in these programs. And consider it before locking in higher levels of spending so we'll never be able to buy our way out of weak programs. Notice I didn't say defund the program. I said buy our way into to better programs.

And I hope the Democratic majority will do that, if not this year, next year.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

SPRATT: (OFF-MIKE) Mr. Besharov.

Now I'm going to yield my time to Jim McGovern.

Allow you to ask questions.

Then we'll come to Mr. Ryan and then I'm going to come back and then Allyson Schwartz is going to yield her time to Rosa DeLauro, allowing Rosa, who has the important position of the chairman of the Ag Subcommittee on Appropriations.

Mr. McGovern?

MCGOVERN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you all for your -- your testimony. I appreciate it very.

I just want to point out a couple of things. We saw at the beginning of this hearing a chart showing that food stamp spending had increased.

Mr. Besharov, you said -- you said -- I just want to repeat it. It's increased because the need is increased. There area more people who need help.

BESHAROV: Sure.

MCGOVERN: So, you know, people want to be reckless spenders and just kind of add more to the program for the sake of adding to a program. There are more country in this country who are hungry. It's that simple.

And I'd also add, and Dr. Franks pointed this out -- that it's not just expanded programs. The dose may be inadequate. I mean, the average food stamp benefit is about $3 a person per day.

So even if housing costs were more reasonable, the fact is food costs have gone up for a whole bunch of reasons, fuel, because of bad -- you know, bio, this corn ethanol stuff and grout and all this -- everything together. The cost of milk has gone up. The cost of bread has gone up. Eggs have gone up. And so -- and the need is not just amongst the poorest of the poor. The need is amongst a lot of working families. I mean, you talk to food banks, people who run food banks, they're going to tell you that, you know, the -- the -- the highest number of people coming in now are people who work for a living. So, I mean, this is -- you know, I mean -- and what we're doing here in the recovery and reinvestment package, I should say, is we're not kind of laying out long-term policies here. I mean this is a short-term emergency response to a real problem on a while bunch of levels. We can argue whether it's the right response or not, but it's -- this is not a wholesale reform of any program. It is -- it is -- it is adding to existing programs basically to meet a need.

And I mean, from the way I look at it, I would like to see us move to a policy where, you know, we don't -- we don't need food stamps anymore. We don't need food banks any more. You know, we don't need all of these programs to provide, you know, these -- these safety nets for people just to have enough to eat. We don't hear -- we don't want to have to deal with any more stories like Dr. Frank talked about Joey coming you severely malnourished.

I mean, this is the United States of America. I mean, it is astounding to them that -- that there are kids that show up to hospitals in the conditions, you know, of Joey. And -- and that doesn't provoke more outrage here in -- in our -- in our government.

Here's -- if we're speaking of reform, here's something that -- that I think is a problem and I think we're going to have to deal with. I mean, we're -- we're trying to respond to an immediate emergency right now where there are a lot of people in this country who are hungry. But one of the problems that have from the government perspective is that a lot of the programs and initiatives that respond to hunger or food, or whatever you want to call it, fall under the -- under the jurisdiction of multiple agencies and department, even under multiple committees here in Congress. There is no one hunger committee. You do food stamps in the Agriculture Bill and the Farm Bill. You've got the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill under Ed and Labor. I mean, there's all these different pieces.

And what I'm concerned about is that in the long term, we don't have a -- a plan in hunger. What is the plan in hunger? How do we do this? I mean, we know we've got to make sure kids have enough to eat. We know the School Lunch Programs and the breakfast program. We know we need to help our food banks. We know we need food stamps. You know, it's a lot more than that.

And, you know, I think there's the need in this government to have somebody empowered, probably in the administration, who has the responsibility to helping to coordinate a plan so people know what the heck they're doing. And so that we can judge whether or not we're making the progress that we also -- we want to make. But every agency and every department and every program is actually working to its -- its -- its level best.

And so, you know, as we -- I'd be curious to hear what people have to say about kind of a long-term stretch. We know -- I think we -- we have the short-term emergency response that we're doing right now. But in the long term, I think the goal needs to be to end hunger and then poverty. I mean, and hunger is -- is the place to begin.

How do you do it? I mean, how do we -- how do we -- how do we get the -- the -- the will to do it?

I tell people all the time, hunger is a political condition. We have all the tools. We know how to do it. This is not as difficult as solving peace in the Middle East. We know what we need to do. It's just we don't have the political will either to provide the funding necessary to -- do deal with the -- with the current problem. And we don't seem to have a long-term strategy. I mean, I don't think -- I mean, can anybody tell me right now that this is what we need to do to end hunger.

So I'll be curious to hear your thoughts about how do we take this to the next level? I mean, I think the goal should be let's end hunger in America. Why -- that should be a quixotic idea. It should just -- something we should be able to do. How do we do that? What -- what do we -- what do we need to do that we're not doing to be able to kind of come up with that -- with that strategy?

BESHAROV: Well, I feel really uncomfortable playing -- giving my opinion about the politics to this -- to this group. But I think what just happened is, if you put X billion dollars into the program without asking for the changes that you just described -- and we could be more specific, but it almost doesn't matter -- two years from now or four years from now, you're not going to have -- I must think here -- you're not going to have money to say here's how we're going to grease the skids for reform. I'm not saying you shouldn't have done it now. But I'm saying this is what's happening. In a different time, if you have put $5 billion on the table for food stamps and said, "We're going to put this $5 billion on the table in return for reform that we can all agree to," some of them being the ones you described, but I'll mention a few, it would have been much better.

My fear is that this is just going to be like Georgia W. Bush when he did prescription drugs. He put whatever hundreds of billions of dollars on the table without asking for any changes in Medicare and he lost his leverage to do anything later. And what I'm afraid the Democratic Congress is going to do is lose its leverage two years from now to do the programs that you want to do to end hunger.

MCGOVERN: I think there's -- there's a difference. And that is that, you know, there are people showing up in emergency rooms who are malnourished today. I mean, there's -- unlike the prescription drug plan, which quite frankly, you know, I didn't think was a good idea, but -- you know, they were -- you know, and it's still -- there's still an opportunity to kind of -- to fix it. We have -- we have -- we right now have an emergency situation. People are hungry. I mean, there are -- it's not only kids. We have elderly people showing up at hospitals who are taking their medication on an empty stomach because they can't afford the food.

I mean, so I understand the -- the issues is this. We do know that there are a lot of people out there who are eligible for foods stamps who are not enrolled. So there are people who need to benefit who will benefit from this -- this increase.

You know, if we're going to get to the issue of reform, it's not just about fixing food stamps or making food stamps better. It's a holistic approach.

I think that there needs to be a hungry czar or there needs to be somebody in the administration -- like -- like a Rahm Emanuel who will be for ending hungry. Somebody who will knock heads together, who has the -- the -- the support of the president of the United States, to actually hold agencies and departments accountable, to coordinate a ballistic strategy. We -- we -- we don't have that strategy. We don't have a strategy to end poverty in this country. I mean, and -- and we -- we need -- you know, you need a plan. You need to know where you're going. And I'm just curious how we get there.

Dr. Frank?

FRANK: Well, this is outside my area of expertise. But there's one smallish thing I can talk to from clinical experience and another that I think Parrott can help you with more detail.

The smallish thing is, depending on school entry age, if kids aged -- everybody ages out of WIC at 5, and they might not get milk again for a year if the age out on September 6 and they start school -- if they can't start school. If they turn on 5 on September 2 and can't get into kindergarten because you have to be 5 on September 1st. So that's a simple thing of a lack of continuity in programs.

The other thing is the tremendous administrative burden and burdens on applicants that comes with this terror that some child somewhere is going to get a muffin and a glass of milk that maybe their mother could have afforded that day. And I don't quite understand that's a big panic, but I -- I understand that it is.

For example, in Philadelphia, they have this great universal school meal program that doesn't bother to certify people individually. Now people say, you must certify people individually. That's going to cost them $800,000 a year. What a waste of money of a school department.

And we don't have a one-stop shopping system where -- so you have to keep reapplying, re-upping, re-documenting every X many months and, you know, it's -- it's burdensome for families. It's also very burdensome for the people trying to work with them as we sit thee and say, now, let's see, is this the time you have to reapply for your food stamps, your health insurance, your WIC, you know, as thought somehow overnight they probably went from desperately poor to being millionaires.

So that's -- that's just a sort of from-the-trenches view. But I wanted to just put those two things out there.

I'm -- I'm sure Sharon can explain it better.

PARROTT: Thank you. I think this is a case where we have to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to respond to this emergence -- this emergency, this crisis where we have programs in place that can -- that can deliver efficient and effective aid for people who are really struggling.

And I have to say, I take some issue with Dr. Besharov for the assumption that the provisions in the package expand eligibility when, in fact, if one looks at the food stamp changes, for example, they don't expand edibility. They're priding increased benefits during this very difficult time.

So I think we have to sort of sort out what the package does and what it doesn't do, and notice -- note that what we can do right now is respond to a real crisis that people are facing. But that is not all we need to do. And that's why I appreciate your questions about, so how do we think about moving forward in the longer run. And I would just say a couple of things.

First of all, I think it's pretty clear that we do need a multi- pronged approach that thinks about people over the course of their lifetime. So as Sheriff Lott talked about, there are things we can do that invest in kids so that they're less likely to be poor as adults. And that's adequate nutrition, it's following early education, it's K- 12 that works, it's a college support system so that low-income kids can go to college.

We know that, particularly, minority low-income kids are much less likely to go to college if they have to take out substantial loans than other students.

So there's sort of a prevention and investing in kids so that they're more productive as adults and less likely to need help as adults.

There's a piece of this that's about supporting low-income working families. That's actually a piece that we've done better at in the last few decades. If you look historically at our safety net, you'll see that compared to 20 years ago, we have more support in place for working families. It's not to say it's enough. It's not to say they're on hold. The -- one of the biggest of which is help for child care expenses that are very high. They tend to come in the life time of a parent when they're fairly young and they end less. And -- and unlike college where people sort of save for a long time if they have resources to go to college, people, when they're 14, don't start saving to put their kid in high-quality early education at a young age.

So there's a supporting work piece that's incredibly important. But it is an area where we've done better.

And then there is, I think, the often, much more difficult to talk about, but incredibly important, particularly when we talk about the children at the edge, the children that are having the most difficult time that really don't have enough to eat, and those are the very poorest kids, the kids below half of the poverty line, the kids where very often multiple things are going on in that family that leaves significant disadvantages. Often we have parents with disabilities. We have children with disabilities that limit parents' ability to work. We have people who are out of -- out of work, sometimes for a short period of time, sometimes for a longer period of time. And it's that kind of a safety net that's gotten weaker over the last couple of decades. We lift a smaller share of kids out of deep poverty than we used to.

Now, doe that means we should get rid of welfare reform and we shouldn't be about work? Absolutely not. But it does mean that we have to recognize that we have a group of families that are quite poor where parents have significant disadvantages. And those kids in those families grow up without things that all of us would want for our own kids.

And so we have to think about how we have a safety net that's very focused on work, that's very focused on personal responsibility, but also provides that critical safety net so kid aren't growing up in deep poverty.

MCGOVERN: I appreciate those comments.

I just want to say finally, I would -- I want to make sure my colleagues get a change to read this report that I inserted in the record, "The Economic Cost of Domestic Hunger." There's a cost of not doing something on this. Kids who don't eat, who are hungry, can't learn in school. Kids who don't eat or have enough food get sick. And there's a tremendous cost that we're paying.

So when people talk about, well, we have this big debt and this big deficit, understand that not doing enough to combat hunger ads to that debt significantly.

And I'll just say that, you know, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war in Iraq that is not even paid for. It has gone on the credit card -- gone on a credit card. And there's been very little outrage over that. I mean, no accountability and no off sets for that money.

It seems to me that, in the short term, investing a little bit more in helping to try to address this problem and getting it right, investing in our kids in particular, will ensure that they have a better future and this country has a better future. And I hope that -- that we're turning the page.

And I do hope that we're going to have long-term strategy. That's my hope, a long-term strategy not only to end hunger, but also in the process to reform these programs to make them work better and hopefully, at some point, get them to where there's no need for these programs any more.

I thank you all.

Thank you.

SPRATT: Thank you, Mr. McGovern. Mr. Hensarling?

HENSARLING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for calling this very important hearing. Particularly at challenging economic times in our nation's history, it's very important that members of Congress go back and thoroughly inspect just how supportive the social safety net is in America.

I certainly appreciate the passion that the gentleman from Massachusetts brings to this issue as well.

As we debate what we in the Congress need to do going forward though, I do think it's important that we have the facts on the table. Welfare is important. Welfare checks are important. I believe paychecks are more important.

But as I understand it from figures I've received from OMB, in this decade alone, food stamps spending has increased 120.9 percent, an average annual rate of increase of about 9.3 percent. Inflation over that same time period has grown less than 3 percent.

Now, we know that was is common -- what is now called SNAP, which most people still understand as food stamps, is an entitlement and has risen at a multiple above inflation. Not to say that we shouldn't do more. But I think it is important to get those facts on the table.

Ms. Parrott, I think I heard you say that you would not be in favor of rolling back the welfare reforms that took place in the TANF program. Did I understand you correct?

PARROTT: What I said, to be clear, is that we should not -- it does mean that work welfare reform should not be work focused. That doesn't mean that I think that every element of the 1996 welfare law or the 2006 Deficit Reduction Act are good policy. I think the notion that welfare reform should be work focused however is broadly -- it's something that is broadly on a bipartisan basis and across states on something that people support.

HENSARLING: There are numerous press reports out today concerning the omnibus spending bill, that's been referred to as the stimulus bill. I hope we have an opportunity to read it. The latest press reports say that it weighs in at roughly 1400 pages.

There are reports that -- and if you look at the models of the House bill and the Senate bill, that we now incent stats to increase -- we will -- we will punish states who have successful welfare reforms. We will reward states that have unsuccessful welfare reforms.

And as I look back at the history of TANF, was I saw is that child probably dropped by 1.6 million children than before TANF. Employment of young mothers doubled. Employment of mothers who have never married was up by 15 percent. Employment of single mothers who dropped out of high school was up by two-thirds. We have unprecedented declines in poverty among children of single moms from 50.3 percent to 41 percent prior to the economic recession. So, again, we don't know what's in the bill. But if press reports are true, would you be concerned about rolling back those aspects of welfare reform in TANF.

Well, I would be happy to explain the provision, as I understand it. This provision was in both the House and Senate bills. It was in those bills at the mark-up, so these provisions have been around and available for inspection for some time. And they have -- provisions between the House and Senate were very, very similar. So I think we have a fair degree of knowledge about what the final package is likely to look like.

It does not roll back welfare reform. I think that is almost a -- something that some people, some outside analysts are waiting around to insight sort of an old style welfare debate.

Let me tell you what it does do. What it does do is to say to states, if because of this recession you have rising numbers of people in need, and you provide support and basic assistance to more people, because in this environment, we have more people and more kids living not just in poverty but in deep poverty, if you provide help to more people, the federal government will help pay some but not all of those costs, OK?

HENSARLING: Forgive me...

PARROTT: Excuse me. The help is -- the help is...

HENSARLING: Forgive me; I'm going to have to interrupt. My time is -- is -- is running out.

Another point I would like to make, I believe you advocated passage of the so-called stimulus bill. I'm curious if you had studied the stimulus bills that were passed in Japan in the 1990s that created the largest amount of per capita debt in the world and brought their per capita income from second in the world to tenth in the world and increased job poverty. Have you had an opportunity to look at that similar legislation?

PARROTT: What I do know is that the -- that many people think that what happened to Japan -- on which I'm not an expert -- is that thee was a need to address both the spending issues and the financial crisis at the same time. I believe people are trying to use that -- those lessons in crafting a multifaceted approach.

But I think that it's very important to be clear that a temporary increase in spending is not driving our long-term deficit picture. Nobody has written more that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities about the long-term deficit problems and the need to bring revenues and spending into line over the long term so that we don't have a crushing amount of debt that our economy can't handle.

But this package is temporary. And the increase in the long-term deficit is not even rounding in that long-term deficit picture.

This committee knows better than anyone that that long-term picture is going to have to be addressed and very difficult priority decisions lay before us. But this temporary spending measure isn't really about that long-term deficit problem.

HENSARLING: I appreciate the sentiment. I hope it proves to be in some respects a temporary problem for a temporary emergency. My experience in Washington is that most temporary programs end up being permanent programs.

But according to the General Accountability Office, we're on the verge of being the generation in America's history to leave the next generation with a lower standard of living.

And I hope that as we look at this legislation and see items like $50 million to the National Endowment for Arts, $200 million for office furniture for the Public Health Service, $1 billion for the follow up to the census, that if we were really passionate about increasing child nutrition programs, maybe instead of passing on debt to the very same children, we're attempting to feed today, maybe, maybe we can make the tough decisions in the budget about what is a true prioritization.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SPRATT: Now, what we're going to do is recognize next Rosa DeLauro because of her chairmanship of the Ag Subcommittee on Appropriations and her long-time interest in -- in support of these programs.

Ms. DeLauro?

DELAURO: I want to thank the chairman.

And I want to thank the panel very much for their commentary.

I will just make one comment to my colleague, Mr. Hensarling. That had we been concerned about the debt that our kids were going to face, we would have, several years ago, done something about the high rate of tax cuts that we provided to the wealthiest people in this nation. And we would have done something about the rate of -- of -- of spending that we did with regard to the Iraq War and thought more about it.

Let me just mention to you, because I that this is important for you to know with regard to Texas. 24 -- 2,400,000 people in -- Texans use food stamps to buy food every month, 10 percent of the people in Texas.

During the recent rough economy, the Food Stamp Program participation -- participation increases in this program because people are in greater need.

And in your state, in 2000, an average of 1.3 million Texans receive food stamps each month. That number rose steadily to 2.4 million in 2007, 82 percent increase. You take a look at any of the numbers that talk about...

SPRATT: Would the gentlelady yield?

DELAURO: Let me finish for a second here. You talk about how -- what is getting calculated in food stamps is that those numbers increased in participation because the need had increased.

And it's also impotent to note -- and sometimes people forget this. And when we deal with a program such as this -- that the reason why we have a School Lunch Program in this country today is, because when they were recruiting for World War II, they found that the recruits were malnourished. So out of a defense industry, we decided to put forward a program that said let's try to do something about making sure that you have -- that -- nutrition is important for what we do.

I think Dr. Frank's comments with regard to what is happening -- what happened to children who are malnourished -- and it is happening over and over again. We know the data. We can understand it. We can take the reports. We can put them on the shelf and then we can do nothing about it. Well, that in my view is negligence of the highest order. I...

SPRATT: Is the gentlelady going to yield?

DELAURO: Yes, I'll be happy to yield.

HENSARLING: Well, I think the comments were directed at me. Number one, I think, as the gentlelady has been a member of this committee, she is seen the statistics that when we have brought about tax relief during the last recession, that we actually grew into positive GDP and tax revenues increased.

Second of all, I appreciate the gentlelady enlightening me about the Texas statistics. As a Texas, I can tell you, my constituents need more paychecks than they need welfare checks. And there's nothing...

DELAURO: These are no welfare checks.

HENSARLING: Well...

(CROSSTALK)

DELAURO: And I -- I take back by time.

These are not welfare checks. It's kind of nice for all of you to continue to talk about them as welfare checks. These are people who are working. They are people who are paying taxes. And quite frankly, there mostly are working people today who in this difficulty for a whole lots of reasons which I'm not going to get into of the economics of a past administration.

I will just say to me -- one of the panelists, Mr. Besharov, this morning, my -- my -- my view -- and we have a child half credit, a piece of this stimulus package, where the eligibility is $3000.

I listen to you and -- I wanted it to go to zero. If I understood you correctly, that we should have gone to zero in order to make those folks at a lower income be able to take advantage of this program. And quite frankly, at the moment, the threshold for the child tax credit is about $12,000. That's means any one who makes below $12,000, is not eligible for a child tax credit.

In the House, our bills was passed and we wanted to take to zero. But we weren't able to get there. Because of a whole lot of political reasons, we weren't able to get there.

If we had been able to get there, almost three million more children would have been eligible for that child tax credit.

And what happened with that child tax credit, which is one of the things that is -- about paychecks and getting money. And these are people who are working. This is from the first dollar earned. This is no welfare check like we'd like to characterize this thing.

By lowering the eligibility to $3000, we're going to give families an additional -- almost 16 million children, their families, an additional $1432. And 5.5 million newly eligible children will be eligible. That's the kind of effort that we're making in this stimulus package. That is reform of this system in order to deal with -- and Mark Zandi has said you want to make this piece the most simulative that you can. Mark Zandi was not the economic adviser to Barack Obama. But the economic adviser to John McCain.

And it's listed here -- and I do have a question for you, Dr. Frank, if my colleagues will -- will indulge me here.

He has -- Mark Zandi, Moody's.com., "$1 in food stamps generates a $1.73 of increased economic activity. At 73 percent, a return of investment guaranteed to be higher than will be received on any other stimulus incentive. And he moves from that in talking about refundable tax credits and what kind of an effect they will have. In order to get the people who need it the most, we're going to spend it and begin to turn this economy around.

My question to Dr. Frank -- and I thank you for being here.

Again, I thank all of you.

And, Dr. Frank, you were with us when we did the children's summit in 2007 and -- and grateful for your testimony at -- at that time.

But what -- what's happening -- the statistics are not for 2008. What's happening in 2008 among children? And this is after the recession has begun. What does it show? What's likely to happen to the rates of hunger and malnutrition among children without this increase in the -- in the food stamps benefits?

And if I can just say this. I think it's a mistake for some of us to buy into this politically correct commentary of food insecure. It's hunger.

FRANK: Well, that's certainly... (CROSSTALK)

DELAURO: People are going hungry in this country. And we talk about the food supply that we have, and that we have the safest food supply. Well, that could be brought into question. But we produce a lot of food in this nation. And kid's families' are going hungry. That an immediacy that we have to focus on and get something done and turn it around before we focus in on some other areas.

Mr. Frank?

FRANK: I -- I don't think we have decent national data. I can only tell you what I told you in the testimony that our -- our program is a sentinel program. If you want to know, is bird flu arriving, you don't go door to door to every door and knock and say is anybody in the house coughing? You sit in an emergency room and you count the number of additional people who come in coughing and then you will figure out if they have bird flu. That's what a sentinel program does.

And that's what we do for under nutrition in very young children. And again, we can tell you that the food insecurity rate in the first six months of 2008 -- we haven't analyst the second yet. We're working on it -- was up about 34 to 38 percent compared to last year in our five sites. It's not national date.

And then I can only tell you, from the clinical trenches, that the referral rate is up. And I was talking to my colleague from Minnesota who was tearing her hair about the kids she was seeing way up with rickets.

So it's -- at the moment, I think we have intimations. I'm not the person who can do the calculation that says that every child that goes into poverty, you know, surly hunger will go up.

But I saw -- at the moment -- I have just -- I have a worm's-eye side view. I'm sure somebody else might have a better view, like Dr. Besharov or Ms. Parrott.

PARROTT: Well, I think the problem is that we -- you know, the data is lagged. The -- the one data source that isn't lagged -- well, there's a couple, and one is the food stamp case list.

And in my testimony, you'll see that there's a chart that shows just how well food stamps, unemployment and poverty track each other over a very long period of time.

So the fact that we have significant sharp rises in the Food Stamp Programs is, I think, virtually sort of a plan -- I mean, it's irrisputable (sic) evidence that we have rising hardship and rising poverty.

And certainly, unemployment rates, the number of unemployed, the drop in the overall employment and the lost of 3.6 million jobs says to us that we know that poverty is rising. The one thing I want to say is that I think there are parts of the stimulus package that are really effective at pushing against that -- what I call that rising tide of poverty. And the child tax credit, the earned income credit provisions, the refundable part of the Making Work Pay Credit, just those three together, we estimate will reduce -- will protect about a million kids from poverty.

So do I think we're going to see rising poverty when we get the official census data? Yes, I do. But I also think that when you take the tax provisions, the food stamp provisions, the unemployment provisions and you put them together, I think it represents a serious significant effort to shore up the safety net in the short run while we're in this very difficult time.

DELAURO: A long time. My time has expired.

I have a final comment to make and I -- I beg you...

SPRATT: Will the gentlelady suspend just for an announcement for members of the commit?

DELAURO: (OFF-MIKE)

SPRATT: This is a reminder that there is a congressional tribute bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. It begins, I believe, at 11:30. For those who would like to go to that, to be on notice that it's about to occur.

I'm going to stay here for as long as our members would like to put questions to our witness panel. But I just wanted to remind you of this event that is coming up.

DELAURO: I would just say, what we did in the Farm Bill was quite frankly avoidance (ph) I think, given what people say, no one on this committee on other side of the aisle. When the "Wall Street Post" (ph) was complaining about the bonuses that are cut back. What we tried to do in the Farm Bill was to say to folks, for 30 years, minimum benefits was at $10 (OFF-MIKE) Since 1996, the standard deduction at the current levels was $134. Talk about (OFF-MIKE) and went to $144. And we began to (OFF-MIKE). Everyone who worked and sits on this side and understands (OFF-MIKE). Yet, at the beginning of the month, (OFF-MIKE) vegetables. And at the end of the month, there's nothing left. And when your kid is hungry, you buy soda, because it's filling their bellies. And they get -- and you eat French fries. And it fills their bellies and it causes seriously health problems.

When we begin to take a look what do you (OFF-MIKE). That is the challenge these people are facing and make sure that government finds the kind of role that it should in exercising a moral responsibility in this endeavor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank my colleagues.

SPRATT: Thank you, Ms. DeLauro.

Mr. (Inaudible)?

(UNKNOWN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to commend the gentlelady from Connecticut for her passion for this issue of feeding the hungry.

However, I do want to point out there there's a lot of discussion about the stimulus package and what it's going to do to fight poverty and hunger. But some of us, at least myself, and I think many of the Republicans have yet to see the stimulus package.

I don't know if anybody on the witness stand has seen the stimulus packaged yet, but I think it would be a little premature to try to explain what's in the bill when we haven't seen it.

Mr. Besharov, you've criticized the food subsidy program. I have a very large agricultural district, lots of -- about 300 different crops in California. And you've really criticized the School Lunch Program as it relates to its contribution to obesity in young children.

And so I would be interested to know, because I've worked on this issue in the past about trying to include more fruits and vegetables into the School Lunch Program. Specifically, what suggestions do you make that this committee could look at in the future as to improving the program?

BESHAROV: I think this goes to the entire question of whether food programs in general can be reformed.

Some people in the food industry think that only because food stamps and School Lunch Programs and so forth that people each food. I don't think -- if we got the balance right in aid to low-income families wouldn't go down that much. There's evidence that food stamps increase this food consumption by about 20 percent. My own feeling about that is, for most people, that's a 20 percent that they could do, that I could do without.

So I don't the fear on the part of agricultural interests, that if food stamps were cash, their interests would suffer.

When we teach about this, in about 90 percent in the policy schools in this country, we say food stamps are stamps or credit cards instead of cash in a welfare payment or in a tax benefit because the politics on the Hill wouldn't allow us to increase tax -- tax write- offs or credits or so forth. So we deal with the reality -- I'm sorry to be so blunt about this. We deal with the reality that this thing seems to have to be separate in a credit card or in a coupon instead of being money.

With that fact comes tremendous friction in how the poor eat. If they're WIC, if they're trying to get WIC, they're taken advantage of by WIC providers. In the School Lunch Program, you get these tremendous inefficiencies as schools to make due under federal rules. So across all of these programs, making aid more like cash would be better for the program. It might be worse for the politics, I understand that.

So now I'll try to answer your question just the way I think you want to hear.

When Mr. McGovern said he's love to see more coordination, I would think, do I agree? We have a WIC program that was planned before food stamps were wildly expanded. If you look at those two programs, there's no particular reason why they shouldn't be much closer together if not run the same way.

We undercut the counseling that goes on within the Food Stamps Program. WE don't have sufficient counseling, nutrition counseling in the WIC program

The Congress felt it could change the welfare program. And here I disagree with Sheryl -- with Sharon, excuse me. Welfare essentially got unrivaled in the stimulus bill. There was no hesitancy to change TANF, but there was no change to many of these other programs where the vested interests still reign supreme.

You could have fixed a little bit this connection between food stamps and WIC, the School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program. There's a list of reforms from the left as well as the right. They could have been inserted just as easily as the TANF changes were inserted into the stimulus plan. They weren't and I understand the politics of that.

That's sad. I'm not complaining. I'm just bemoaning the opportunity that was lost, the chances of getting a congressional committee two years from now to say, oh, I give up my jurisdiction, let one committee take care of it, the chances of moving food programs out of Agriculture into those kind of anti-poverty agencies went down considerably with the increased expenditures that the Congress has authorized.

So that's sad. I'm not angry. It's sad because it's an opportunity lost to reform these programs at a time when it would have been possible to do it with small changes.

I hope that's answer to your question.

FRANK: Mr. Chairman, am I permitted to make a comment?

(UNKNOWN): I think my time is up, Mr. Chairman, so I yield back.

SPRATT: Is that Ms. Parrott?

FRANK: No, Ms. Franks, Dr. Franks.

SPRATT: Ms. Franks, go ahead.

FRANK: Working among the poor, food is the only fungible part of their budget which is largely become truly dependent on food stamps for their food budget because every other penny has to be utilities, housing, and getting to work. And because -- so that -- I would be perturbed -- I think people would eat even worse and their children would eat even worse if food stamps were not designated for food.

So I find that very concerning. I also have seen many people who are above the cut-off for food stamps -- which is 130 percent of poverty -- who are high nutritional risk. And so I would be very sad, also, if all those children lost access to WIC.

Finally, these things all (inaudible). I mean, we found that energy problems, housing problems, food and security, you can make an index out of them. And you can see a (inaudible) response when they're all three together on child well-being.

So just as a clinician, I would say I was a little perturbed. We also have data, by the way, about TANF from way back when when it was starting, the families who are sanctioned off TANF. And in Massachusetts, we have this family cap thingie that you could find for hospitalization, for food and security in their kids (ph).

So I don't think that that was a victimless crime, so to speak. I mean -- I know that's not the right thing to call it. But I'm not -- from a little child's point of view, I'm not sure it was a great success, at least, for the ones that I take care of and the ones that I (inaudible).

SPRATT: Mr. Blumenauer?

BLUMENAUER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I -- just reflecting for a moment on the most recent comments and thinking about Ms. DeLauro talking about struggling to raise the minimum benefit from 10 to 14 (inaudible) on a month. And I'm struck by -- maybe if we want to talk with reform, we split this out, as you refer, from rolling it into the agriculture and nutrition because I'm struck at the difference in terms of paperwork, income limits.

I mean, we couldn't even raise -- we couldn't even -- with the president, supporting this, we couldn't lower the maximum payment to families, to farmers to a quarter million dollars. We couldn't do that.

And we're still paying some subsidies to dead farmers. That kind of rankles people. We have -- you're talking about the spectrum from right to left? There's a spectrum to try and reform the agricultural programs so that we're not lavishing it, for example, on some of the richest people in America like the sugar producers and that everybody in the America pays so that they are on the gravy train which virtually every independent observer agrees is wrong.

We've got this bizarre disconnect when it comes to one end of production, where we're not very hardcore about restricting who gets it, how lavish it is, modest reforms and things like pop (ph) insurance that we don't have to fight through that all over. But it strikes me that there's a stunning different standard. Richest farmers, not the average farmer, richest farmers, agri-business, very high limit. Not much in the way of paperwork, and we've really focused on poor people who need it. We have a different standard, different screen, and because they're mushed together, it appears that the most vulnerable lose.

And I'm wondering if any of you would elaborate on the notion of splitting it out, concentrating on nutrition, not getting -- tripping over ourselves that subsidies for cotton farmers to grow cotton in the desert, and whether it's going to be a million dollars, a quarter million, a half million, and focus in on what would happen if we split this focus and maybe had some uniform standards about who benefits and what our expectations are.

Doctor Frank?

FRANK: I think that's outside my area of expertise.

(UNKNOWN): There's an argument in the academic world about whether the agriculture lobby needs the food stamp program passed or whether the food stamp program needs the agriculture bill passed. I've looked at this literature. It's very interesting literature it is. We got the balance of power in this argument and (ph) you're asking that question.

My impression is that the ag interest needs the urban Democrats more than the other way around. But that doesn't seem to be the conventional wisdom on the Hill.

(UNKNOWN): I guess I would limit my comments to the substance of the program and I'll let you all sort out jurisdiction among congressional committees.

(UNKNOWN): I want to be clear. I'm not talking about jurisdiction. I'm talking about standards that we use to appraise in terms of paperwork, in terms of eligibility, in terms of concern. Are we as concerned about these poor children as we are rich sugar farmers?

(UNKNOWN): I think that there are a number of improvements that were made in the farm bill and that were made in the previous farm bill that ran part of the way to trying to make the program more accessible, particularly to working families, trying to reduce some of those paperwork hurdles, trying to make it so that people aren't constantly having to take off work to come into the food stamp office.

And those, I think, were extremely important parts of an overall attempt to say, when people are eligible for the food stamp program, we really want to help them because it's good for their kids because it helps them stay and work, because people will be healthier. And so I think those were important strides.

Do we have further to go? Absolutely. And I think part of it is about the federal rules and part of it is about states looking at their programs and asking the hard question, what's the next step I can go where I can maintain programs' effectiveness and accuracy, but where I have a welcome mat for people who really need help? And I think the last two farm bills have been really, I think, they've been really important in trying to ease some of those paperwork burdens. We know from a lot of research in the healthcare...

(UNKNOWN): My time has expired and I want to have respect for my other colleagues. I appreciate that.

I think this is something, though, we need to look at, and, doctor, I think your point about who needs food the most, at some point splitting this out, letting be judged on its own merits is important, because it seems to me this Congress and prior Congresses have not cared as much about poor children as they do rich sugar farmers.

Thank you.

SPRATT: Ms. Tsongas?

TSONGAS: Thank you all very much. And thank you for your testimony.

As we're talking about the farm bill, initially, I have to say, as a new member of Congress, and I was -- that vote was brought to the floor, I had to look to my district in which I have three, urban communities in which one out of three children go to be hungry. And so that was a major factor in my decision to vote for that bill in spite of my reservations on other pieces of it.

And just anecdotally, to talk about the importance of school lunch programs, I have a large high school that I went to visit, and they were telling me that they provide breakfast and lunch. Toward the end of the week, not too many young people show up for breakfast, but at the first beginning of the week, on a Monday, the line is out the door, because these children have gone hungry through the weekend.

And also, in that same community, a remarkable dining center run by a local church, in which many working poor come because it's the one place that they can get the food that they and their family need.

But looking ahead to how we can change this, and we've talked about it a bit, though you all may differ vehemently with each other on specific programs or methods, you've all acknowledged in some form in your written testimony that the federal government does have a role to play in addressing the well-being of low-income children. Under current law, many federal benefits programs, including SNAP food stamps, penalize low-income families who attempt to put aside even small amounts for a rainy day by reducing their benefits. This disincentivizes savings, keeps low-income families permanently stuck in poverty, and leaves them extremely vulnerable to payday lenders and the cycle of ever-deepening debt.

As we look ahead, in your view, would removing some of these barriers to savings, thereby giving low-income families the ability to save small amounts when they're able, help improve the outcomes of these at-risk families and at-risk children? And I don't know if it's beyond some of your ken, but I'm just curious as to what your thinking might be.

(UNKNOWN): I can start.

I think that asset limits can discourage savings. They can keep -- I think they also can keep people who really need help in a temporary emergency off the program.

For (inaudible) to save what are usually pretty modest amounts of savings, which them means that they have less of a cushion for other emergencies that arrive. I think we also have a problem of, particularly with respect to retirement savings, where we don't want people to be forced to cash out what are often extremely modest amounts of money that they've put away for retirement, because somebody lost a job and they need to go the food stamp program. And I think we've made some progress in some of those areas with respect to retirement accounts.

So I think asset limits are an important area to look at. I think there ahs been some progress in some programs. For kids, in particular, which is not universal, but most states don't have asset limits in Medicaid and SNAPS (ph), which means that healthcare coverage isn't hinging on whether that family has $2,200 in savings and that's too much. But certainly in the food stamp program and some of the other programs targeted, there are asset limit issues.

I think there's a saving incentive not to save. I actually think the bigger problem is that people need temporary help in the programs (inaudible) now because of modest savings.

LOTT: This is an issue that was of great interest during the first Bush administration and their efforts. And I think many people feel that it would be good if people who will receive welfare benefits or food stamps or whatever were not penalized for saving money for their own benefit. It's a tricky thing to do, in part because it's so easy to abuse.

So in principle, I think many people think it's something to do. In practice, it needs time for someone to think the process, the rules, and percentages. It would be really nice to get -- Senator, I don't know the answer. Are all (inaudible) with their asset limits wind up between (inaudible) and food stamps? I don't think so.

TSONGAS: Not all, but I think most.

LOTT: We can't even get -- I think it's about -- actually, I think it's in the 30s -- I think it's most people -- but we can't even get the rules about how much your car is worth that are lined up (ph). But there's a little bit of head-banging that could be done about this. And that's one of those small reforms that I hope the next time you do one of these bills, stick a little less stuff in.

TSONGAS: Thank you.

SPRATT: Thank you, Ms. Tsongas.

Mr. Scott. SCOTT: Thank you.

Dr. Frank, low birth rate is highly correlated with learning disabilities and mental health problems. Can you tell me the effect of malnutrition during pregnancy has on low birth weight?

FRANK: Yes. One of the most important determinants of low birth weight is the mother's nutritional status when she enters pregnancy and the amount of weight she gains during pregnancy. And if you study any other insult to birth weight like cigarettes, if you don't control for those defactors (ph), nobody believes a word you say. And then rightly because that's the most potent determinant.

So you're right, there's huge, social, personal, learning, every kind of cause for low birth rate. And if you can decrease the low birth rate, you will decrease not only that, but you'll decrease dead babies. You'll decrease infant mortality.

SCOTT: Now, the March of Dimes emphasizes the importance of pre- conception nutrition.

FRANK: Yes.

SCOTT: Did I understand you to say that was important, too?

FRANK: Absolutely. In fact, one of the problems of our system is we don't believe in taking care of women who aren't pregnant, especially young women.

So you know they can't really afford folate (ph). It's one of the more expensive foods, or certainly not pills. And so they enter pregnancy both macro -- sometimes macro, certainly micronutrient deficient, and the affect of folate before you even know you're pregnant. So that's where we get all kinds of trouble.

SCOTT: And what portion of the brain -- of a person's brain growth takes place before birth?

FRANK: Oh, that's interesting. A lot. I can tell you that two- thirds of it happens from birth in the first year of life to two- thirds of the adult size is achieved.

But all of your brain growth happens before birth. You know, I mean, there is no brain unless, you know, starting...

SCOTT: So I mean, by the first year of life, you said two- thirds/

FRANK: Of the adult size is there. The newborn brain double 2- 1/2 times in size. I'm not an OB, so I apologize for not answering.

SCOTT: And if you are malnourished during that period of time, what happens to your intellectual capacity?

FRANK: Well, there are lasting deficits. And interesting again, it's not just by queue (ph), but in things like ability to pay attention. So even if it's only 5 or 10 points in IQ, what really knocks these kids down later is what's called executive functions and attention regulation.

SCOTT: And is there a correlation between hungry children and their ability to pay attention in school behavior; drop-out, a big part of it?

FRANK: There's a short term and a long term. Anybody who's had to miss meals knows that when you're not getting enough to eat or you're on the food stamp challenge, you feel ach (ph), your head aches, you can't concentrate, you're irritable. And hungry kids fight more, and are more disruptive in class.

Also kids short term, kids who have been hungry as young children are more vulnerable to the disruptive behavioral effects of short-term hunger as older children. That's been shown.

So yes, again, if you want kids to be ready to learn, they need to be well-nourished from conception onward.

SCOTT: Thank you. And Mr. Lott, from a law enforcement perspective, is there truth that there's a correlation between child abuse and future crime?

LOTT: Yes.

SCOTT: And is that's why the nurse/family partnership is so effective?

LOTT: Very much so.

SCOTT: People wonder (ph) how you can afford programs like the nurse/family partnership. What are the long-term costs of that program?

LOTT: I'm not aware...

SCOTT: Do you -- in the long term, does it save money than you spend?

LOTT: Yes.

Just to follow up a little bit. If we can invest a little bit in these kids, it's going to save us in the long run. Head Start is $8,000 peer kid. Incarcerate a child in prison is $55,000 a year.

SCOTT: And you mentioned after-school programs in your testimony because the 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. time period is a high crime time period? And if you funded after-school programs, you could reduce the incidence of crime?

LOTT: Yes. If you keep them busy doing something positive, the gangs will leave them along. They're not going to (inaudible) your gangs and commit crime.

SCOTT: Now, if you invested in all of that, could you in prevention, is there any question that if you had a substantial budget, that you could in fact reduce crime significantly?

LOTT: Yes, we could.

SCOTT: (Inaudible) states in African-American incarceration is that 4,000 per 100,000 so 100,000 population would be sending about $100 million in incarceration. Is there any question is your mind that if you used a significant portion of that on prevention programs that you could eliminate a lot of that incarceration?

LOTT: Yes, we could. As money up front will save us in the long run.

SCOTT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SPRATT: Thank you, Mr. Scott.

Mr. Schrader?

SCHRADER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In Oregon, my business community's very invested, very excited about our Oregon pre-K Head Start Program, and it's gotten a lot of the results, I think (inaudible) has talked about in their programs.

There seems to be a lot of -- well, I guess if I was to summarize, I'd like to panel to comment on. There's probably three levels of benefits that one ascribes to Head Start Pre-K programs. One is the maybe some of the short-term benefits, you know, school readiness, ready to learn, nutritionally compensate so they can pay attention has been alluded to. That seems, in my opinion -- please correct me -- to have pretty much universal agreement. Everyone seems to think that that's probably true.

Things get a little sketchy, I guess, as I understand the studies, after that, questions about special education, how long the results last, is there catch up and that sort of thing. Although hearing today again, the sheriff talk about (inaudible) and juvenile crime. I would think that more people agree or tend to agree that these early education programs do help.

And there're studies I know that show -- in Oregon, we did a study that the cost of educating that student goes down dramatically if you actually get to them early. There's less some of these special ed programs.

The one that I would also like to get a comment, kind of a broad question, is on the long-term effects. Very few longitudinal studies have been done. And I guess I'd like comments on, Mr. Besharov, too, particularly about what's your criteria? I get the sense you're not against any of these programs. You'd just like to make sure they're targeted to the right people, or measuring the right outcomes, and getting the right results.

So I'd be curious about the short, medium, and long-term effects of what general agreement there is among the panel or not, and recommendations. (UNKNOWN): There are definitely, they are called sleeper effects, which means you see it early and then you don't see it for awhile. And then, suddenly, you see it again later.

The other thing is that nutrition Head Start enrichment is not an immunization. And what you really need is a continuum from early Head Start and birth to right with the continued support for children into school age.

Also, I forgot to mention in terms of economic stuff that my colleagues have been (inaudible) with the PAES text (ph) that I'd like to enter into the record called Partnership for Americans Economic Success. And based on the results of learning difficulties and so forth in kids who are poorly fed, they've been able to calculate, you know, lifetime savings instead. So and that's just eating. That's not even in early childhood.

I think again, this also things tend to be synergistic, that if you -- there's certainly data that nutrition plus early education has a more powerful effect on later development than either one alone.

(UNKNOWN): If I were just to respond to your question, I would start with the well-known analogy, which is the postal service versus Fed Ex. Most of the studies which show long-term positive impact on children were early interventions are essentially run by the private sector. Small, very intense, very high-quality programs.

When we try to measure the same impact from Head Start and publicly run programs, we don't get nearly the results. I think Mr. (inaudible) is correct. (Inaudible) is about generous way to describe what happened when a Head Start child learns after a year.

And this is why this debate has gotten so complex and sort of controversial. Many people and myself believe that the idea behind programs like Head Start are incontrovertible. Of course, it matters how children are raised. And of course, it matters, and then government should intervene if the parents aren't doing a good enough job.

And by the way, the key factor here is the parents more than anything else.

But I think a fair reading of the quality of the average Head Start program isn't a very good one is that it's far lower than we'd like, far lower. And again, it's a situation where it's a vest interest that's protected by the Congress, not subject to the same kind of accountability as your average kindergarten class.

Now, I'm not saying that No Child Left Behind is a perfect bill. It's got loads of problems. And I'm not sure if I'd voted for it. But it is the case that it establishes firm accountability for what kids learn but (ph) don't learn.

In Head Start, we started ignoring the fact that this is the only chance so many disadvantaged children have for a better shot in life. And we've been hesitant to say, we expect more from the program. Now, under the Clinton administration, the Congress was a little bit more supportive of requiring improvements from Head Start. I think the Congress didn't trust the Bush administration. Maybe under the Obama administration, and President Obama has in some places said the right things about improving the programs like Head Start, at least named Head Start -- is a program that needs improvement.

But it is a fallacy, it's a fallacy to a Fed Ex works and therefore, the U.S. postal system ought to be expanded. Fed Ex works and therefore, the U.S. postal system ought to be improved so it works half as well as Fed Ex.

(UNKNOWN): And to extend the analogy, you get what you pay for. And many Head Start teachers are terribly paid. There's huge turnover. And so just like it costs more to send something Fed Ex than by the postal service, I think it's a very clear analogy. You get what you pay for. And there's not argument that there needs to be upgrades in the -- into the training and support and so on and pay of teachers in Head Start programs.

(UNKNOWN): I thought for a while we were going to be in total agreement. Head Start costs more than any other form of care in this country, including care of upper, middle-class children receive. Maybe there's a need for more money for staff, but the most important thing, is to use that money more wisely.

FRANK: Yes, I think it's -- as a physician, it's very important is you look at the whole child and then the nurse, the nutritionist, the social worker, I think are huge. Also, in terms of what causes kids to fail in school is not whether or not they know three letters or four letters at the end of -- that's even his question about the developmentally appropriate Rubrick (ph) -- but whether they know how to sit, how to listen, how to not beat up on other children, all sorts of things. How do you know their colors (ph)? I can't tell you...

(UNKNOWN): I know we've gone back and forth. I'll make you a deal.

... another 20 percent in Head Start, if you put some rules about Head Start's impact...

SCHRADER: My time's -- I just wanted to hear quickly from the sheriff, is that was possible.

LOTT: A modest improvement's better than no improvement at all.

(LAUGHTER)

And, you know, part of the, you know (inaudible) bill is to improve the quality of the program. I know for a fact watching kids, not only are they learning ABCs in Head Start early, is learning social skills, how to stay in class, how to listen. If we can keep that child in class, and continue going to school, they're not going to drop out and they're not going to in crime.

If they're out of school, they drop out, I guarantee you, most of them are going to end up in crime. So if we pay that little up front, it's going to save us lots in the long run.

But the quality of Head Start is improving. But again, a modest improvement is better than nothing at all. And if we cut it out, we don't have anything.

SPRATT: Ms. Moore, Wisconsin.

MOORE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you for a very impressive panel. I guess I want to start out with Mr. Besharov. You've made some very kind of provocative statements and some of which I agree. You talked about funding for some of the nutrition programs like WIC for example. And, you know, I do think it's important to make sure, for example, that more fresh fruit and vegetables are available under this program rather than just providing a subsidy for our dairy farmers with cheese and so forth. And the program that doesn't necessarily support nursing moms is really, what happens when you're a lactating mom, you need more fruits and vegetables than fat in cheese. I just wanted to make that particular comment.

Even though I'm from Wisconsin, I'm for breast feeding.

I also wanted to just comment on something like the Head Start program. You know, the alternative for many families who are trying to get one of those Head Start slots is just staying at home with maybe an elderly grandmother on the days she's not at dialysis treatment, so Head Start has been extremely important.

And I think you should have listened to what the doctor said. Head Start is only good if there's a maintenance of effort involved. Any kind of educational program benefits of it will -- there'll be some slippage if there's not maintenance of effort.

I have a question for you, Ms. Parrott with respect to the Welfare program. I'm from Wisconsin, Frankenstein's laboratory for welfare reform. And you made a very interesting statement to our colleague who is not here, that it ought to be continued to be work- based.

I want to ask you just very quickly, of the numbers of children who are served under Janus (ph), how many of them are like under 12 years old?

PARROTT: The vast majority, I don't know the exact...

MOORE: I mean, is it something astronomical, like 80, 85 percent. These are kids who can't even read newspapers. I mean, so how are they going to work?

Also, so in terms of the safety net being a work-based program, so you know, we know that economic economies are cyclical, so at the point in which Mr. Hensarling talked about having to life his folk out of poverty in 1996 when we ended Welfare as we knew it, we were riding on the Clinton good economy. So can you compare the numbers of kids who are in poverty now as opposed to those who were in poverty when we started the Welfare program?

PARROTT: Well, how poverty did fall, I didn't bring all those data with me and I don't keep them in my head. But certainly, child poverty (inaudible) and child poverty (inaudible) pretty significantly, pretty clear from the research that the attempts by some to ascribe that to the wonders of welfare reform are vastly overstated.

Welfare reform did help move some people into work and that did reduce poverty. But we significantly strengthened work support in the mid-1990s. We extended childcare assistance. We extended health -- we expanded healthcare coverage to children in low-income working families. And we did very significant expansions in the income tax credits.

The work support, the strong economy, and to some extent, the work-base support in welfare reform had created a three-legged stool that helped more people to work and helped reduce poverty. But I will say that amidst that good new -- and that is good news -- but in the midst of that good news, there are some disturbing trends with respect to the ability of our safety net to respond to the needs of the very poorest kids. And that actually grew weaker in the wake of welfare reform.

MOORE: Yes, that's very important, so can you just -- what numbers of children are we seeing in poverty right now?

PARROTT: It's about 17 percent or 13 million kids are in poverty. We just started to see an increase in child poverty in 2005...

MOORE: And hunger as well.

PARROTT: I'm sorry?

MOORE: And hunger?

PARROTT: Most sever hunger.

MOORE: Severe hunger.

PARROTT: Yes.

MOORE: OK.

PARROTT: We did see some increase in the latest data on childhood hunger. I think all of that data is very -- is obviously very outdated...

MOORE: I have two seconds left, so one quick question. And that is, you said that we needed some kind of safety net, particularly now with the kind of economic cyclical event that we're experiencing now. What kind of -- and we have no effective delivery system for the poorest kids now that we don't have ASDC and that we have time limits. Is there something that you could suggest to this committee for delivering services assuming that this recession may deepen to those families and to those children?

PARROTT: Well, I think that the reality is (ph) we're going to need to rely on the state human service delivery system because that's the system that's giving kids food stamps and giving them healthcare. They have the capacity and they have the resources to provide basic assistance to more families when more families fall under deep poverty. I think it's a real test of welfare reform and state (inaudible) programs as to whether those programs will respond to the rising number of kids in poverty and deep poverty.

We see that in some states TANF (ph) are responding and more kids are getting help. And in other states, in very difficult, economic situations, that isn't happening. And so I think this is an open question as to how well TANF (ph) will respond to rising deep poverty in the recession.

MOORE: Thank you so much. And I yield back.

(OFF-MIKE)

REP. CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, R-WYO.: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

My questions are for Dr. Besharov. Have I pronounced that correctly?

(OFF-MIKE)

Thank you sir.

You speak in much of your literature about the need to reform federal safety net programs to avoid fostering a culture of dependency on government services. The massive expansion in safety net spending included in the versions of the stimulus bill that we have seen so far include food stamps, Medicaid, TANF (ph). And they're mostly absent, meaningful reform in this direction.

Are you concerned that these massive no-strings-attached spending increases could further facilitate the creep of the culture of dependency into the middle class?

BESHAROV: I'm not sure middle class because I'm not sure what the middle class is, but it's surely the case that for the lower middle class, we are creating a set of rules that generate, if not dependent behavior, then dependency on the government. I'll give you one example, which I found quite striking.

Maybe 40 to 60 percent of the pregnant women who go on WIC, go on WIC because their income went down because they left their job to have a baby. They're otherwise middle-class families and because of WIC's very generous, relatively generous benefits, those women go on WIC]

Now, my colleagues here on the panel will say that's all right because that's needed. Here's what happens. When you all are trying to get money to expand WIC for the truly needy, when the Congress is trying to get money to expand nutrition counseling for WIC recipients, that money that's going to middle-class families doesn't just disappear. It's counted against WIC. It's part of the WIC spending.

So Larry Sommers said it about our stimulus bill, if I remember correctly, temporary, targeted, and timely is (ph) three keys. Targeted is tremendously important in the stimulus bill, not just because we want to increase economic activity, but because in the long run, mistargeting these benefits will create expectancies that will continue in the future.

That's why I'm afraid that these programs will create a different level of dependency. Sharon was talking about the TANF provision. In the stimulus bill is a provision that gives the states 80 percent of the cost of anybody they add to the welfare role, eight-zero, which is above almost every state reimbursement range. That's a giant incentive for the states to put people on welfare. A giant incentive.

And the states will do it whether they have an increase in poverty or not. They'll move people from other programs and put them on TANF to claim the benefits. So there's no doubt in my mind that TANF (inaudible) will go up regardless of the economic situation in the state. And to me, the only question is, whether this provision will disappear in two years or whether it will be with us forever.

LUMMIS: Well, thank you. Mr. Chairman, one more question for Dr. Besharov.

I can tell you in my home state of Wyoming, that WIC is a wonderful program. And so I'm focused on trying to make it healthy, keep it healthy, and keep it focused on those who need it the most.

Can you give us your thoughts about what the most ripe areas for reform are?

BESHAROV: Two. First, if you're to go to a WIC office, and you ask the people who provide nutrition counseling, what do you counsel the people who come into WIC? It is to not eat of the things that are in the WIC package, which is don't eat so many eggs, don't eat so much cheese, and so forth. So the move to broaden, or improve, or vegetize the WIC package is tremendously important.

Congressman Moore talked about breast feeding. The research says -- you notice I'm not saying because I don't understand the process too well -- but the research says that WIC discourages breast feeding. And from what everything we know, it's very important that all women who can, should breast feed.

(UNKNOWN): OK, there you go. All right.

(OFF-MIKE)

BESHAROV: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The research is research. The research -- I know this is Capital Hill where you can ignore research, but the research is widely written about, that it's a problem because the incentive package works that way. I said I didn't know. I was trying to be very honest about it, (inaudible). I'm just saying what I read in the literature written by academics, not from the left or the right, but serious academics. They're worried about it. Ms. Moore was worried about it. It's a serious problem in the program, and I just really would like a little bit more respect on that.

SPRATT: Let's give Dr. Frank. I think Dr. Frank probably...

FRANK: Go ahead.

(OFF-MIKE)

SPRATT: I want to give Dr. Frank an opportunity to respond to that statement.

FRANK: OK. I think the reason -- WIC has had a huge breast feeding push recently. And if you look at people who would not have breast fed, you know, by epidemiologic criteria has been quite effective.

The second thing about the package is, in fact, there's a much more revived package that's right now being rolled out now. The problem is it's not funded adequately because it had to be revenue neutral or whatever you call something neutral, to provide the amount of fruits and vegetables that the IOM recommended. And that's one of the things that people are pushing for in the child nutrition reauthorization is yes, there's new research, and yes, there are new ideas. WIC has evolved a lot as science has evolved. And it's always somewhat behind because it's hard to, you know, just like the food pyramids' always behind science. It's always behind science.

But it's certainly moving in the directions that Mr. Besharov has outlined. But, so I think it's quite -- it's misleading to rely on old data and old facts.

SPRATT: Could the gentleman yield for one second?

FRANK: Am I a gentle lady?

SPRATT: I yield to the -- I now recognize (inaudible).

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chair, I'll be brief.

But I would encourage the doctor to go to some WIC centers. I've been in a lot of WIC centers lately. There are charts set (ph) for breast feeding. The formula's not even on the shelf so that if somebody's asking for formula, there's somebody who takes 15 minutes and sits down and talks to them (inaudible). Food schedules change. But you, with the best of intentions, I think, have missed information about what reflects the accuracy of the program right now.

So I would encourage you to get out and visit some WIC centers. They'd love to have you there.

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chair, is this my time now or...

SPRATT: This is your time.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You know, the data shows that a really shameful picture here in the United States. The future of America is 73 million children. Seventy-three million children where we're the richest country in the world, 18 million of them live in poverty. And the recovery package that is before the Congress right now, is to create an opportunity for those 3 million children unfortunately, who might be falling into poverty. The same children are going to build our bridges, be our doctors, and teach our grandchildren in the future.

We need to give them every tool in the tool box to succeed. And that's what the recovery package is attempting to do. But what does poverty mean? We've all talked about it. And Dr. Frank, you did a great job.

It means a child is going to bed at night (inaudible), waking up in the morning thinking about what's down in the kitchen for breakfast. It's a child and a parent wondering where they're going to sleep that night. A family member will take them in, or maybe they're still in their home and they're afraid the sheriff is going to come knocking on their door for foreclosure. It's a child or a parent knowing that the child is sick, that their ear hurts, that they should go see a doctor now, but waiting until the eardrum ruptures because they don't have healthcare.

So if our children are our strategic resource, if we aren't even going to talk about our moral responsibility to one another as human beings, our children are our strategic resource. It's essential for the future of this economy for the development of this country and for our democracy, to lift these children out of poverty.

So I want to focus a little bit on the testimony of Dr. Frank and the sheriff here.

We know that early experiences in nutrition in the first tree years of life are literally shaping the architecture of the brain. I love that point. Shaping the architecture of the brain.

How much does investing in young children's health and nutrition reduce the cost of remedial learning, social difficulties, and healthcare? And if we are only beginning to study that to really understand it, what should this congress be doing? What should this Budget Committee be doing to address what we now know scientifically is so important in the first three years of life in order to reduce costs later for this country, to reduce social problems later that the sheriff pointed out? What is our responsibility to invest in the most precious resource in this country, our children?

LOTT: If we don't feed our kids, and give them an opportunity to succeed in school, then I'm going to have to deal with them later. And the cost of me dealing with them in crime is a lot more than it is if invested in them at a early age.

You know, I think our responsibility to make sure that they have that opportunity to eat and to be in school. One thing that the economy has done is where it is now is made job security for law enforcement. As the economy goes down, crime is going up. And not only today is it impacting us, it's going to impact us years from now because these kids that we're not taking care of today, are going to be our teenagers who are out here robbing, stealing, and murdering people. We're going to have to deal with them long term if we don't develop programs that's (ph) going to help them to succeed in life and in school and in life.

It's either now, pay now, or we're really going to have to pay a lot later on.

FRANK: As I said, I'm not an economist, but my colleague, both the brand I support, that Representative McGovern cited and my colleague, Dr. John Cook have done a calculation, that if food insecurities double -- this study that says food insecurities doubles the likelihood of a child needing special ed. So you wouldn't be able to abolish all need for special ed if you (inaudible)) food and security. But if you took -- he calculated that you would -- and assuming that not every kid was food and secure is going to need special ed, thank goodness -- assuming 100 percent receipt of the maximum food stamp benefit that (inaudible) people get reduces food and security by 25 percent, if you -- you would be able to save about 1.250 per child annually. And that's a lot of children.

So again, I don't make these calculations. It's not my skill. But certainly, other people have thought it through. And I think in human terms, it's incalculable.

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chair, there are two things for the record. One is from Art Rolnex (ph) who is at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis on early childhood development. And it has a long-term study in it. We don't have very many (inaudible) which some of my people refer to an old study because it's a 30-years study, but it's tracked (ph) kids for about 25 years. That's why it's old.

And some information from Nobel Laureate on (inaudible).

SPRATT: No objection. Will the gentleman, you'll be five seconds?

(UNKNOWN): That would be up to the chair. I'm new on the committee and I'm going to respect the chair.

(LAUGHTER)

I move the -- if I have five seconds, I'll yield it.

SPRATT: Without objection, these are made part of the record.

Mr. McGovern?

MCGOVERN: I just wanted to -- earlier today, there was -- earlier, there was a reference made to WIC as being somehow this middle-class, middle-income program. I just wanted, for the record, to reflect that in 2006, among WIC participants reporting some income, the average, annualized family income was $15,577. I don't think that's a middle-class or middle-income program. And I just thought it was important to make that clear for the record. Thank you.

SPRATT: Thank you, Mr. McGovern. Mr. (inaudible)?

(UNKNOWN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks to the witnesses. I'd like to make a couple of comments about some of the things that have been said. And then, I do have one question to ask.

I want to address this question or issue of dependency. And, you know, we deal in words and some times words take on political consequences. And I know a lot of people like to refer to these programs as welfare programs and so forth. And I've been in Congress for just a little over two years, and before that, I was in the private sector for 30 years, and I ran businesses, and have been involved in a lot of different organizations.

And the other way to look at it, a different perspective on these programs that support working families, low-income families, is that this really is an employer subsidy. And we have, until we get to the point in this country where we're willing to demand that businesses pay a living wage, and we allow them to hire people and pay them at rates which do not sustain families, then the programs we devise are not only defensible (ph) from a moral standpoint, the human standpoint, but also from the standpoint that we are actually subsidizing these employers. We are giving them a fungible work force that they can use at their convenience.

And so we can't lose sight of that.

The second thing is and it's a little bit off topic, but Mr. Henson (ph) took a potshot at the arts when he criticized the stimulative or I guess he implied that there was no stimulative effect of economic stimulative effect of the arts. And that may be true in his district, but in Louisville, Kentucky, I will tell you that the arts are an incredibly important part of our community.

We just had a run of "Wicked" in our community. It grossed $1,300,000 a week for four weeks. It brought people from across the region into the community. They stayed in hotels. They ate in our restaurants. I think that there are figures to sustain the fact that the arts are one of the greatest multipliers in economic activity, and millions of people literally throughout the country are employed there.

So if you're going to stimulate the economy, it's kind of hard to ignore the arts because they do play such an important role. And not to say to ignore the fact that they do help sustain a certain level of civility in society.

So all that being said, and I'll get off my soap box there. Once of the things that really concerns me and I'm so happy to be on the Budget Committee, because -- and we've alluded to this question in many different ways -- the ability to or the necessity to talk about the long-term costs and the long-term savings of these investments that we make in children. And it disturbs me that we deal with the PAYGO rules and within a five-year budget window, or -- and we're developing budgets in over a year-to-year basis, which in my way of thinking, discourages the type of long-range analysis of these types of benefits.

So I'm just curious -- I'll throw it open as to what do you think this is a problem as well that our budgeting process and our thought process is in some way, doesn't take into account what we have to take into account if we're going to make practical decisions about investments?

PARROTT: Well, I can start. I think that there's no question that all spending is the same and not all tax cuts are the same. And that when we evaluate policies, we have to evaluate them on a cost benefit analysis. And we have to be serious about that. And we have to be serious about prioritizing -- making priorities because we don't have unlimited resources.

Now, I don't think that means we need to change the scoring rules and that we don't need to have PAYGO. What I do think it means, though, is that we need to be serious about priority sets. And when we have investments that we know have enormous payoffs for our economy, for the lives of individual children, we know that they have payoffs, that we need to know what they cost. We need to understand their benefits. And we need to be willing to come up with the resources to pay for them.

And so I think that there are limits in our ways of budgeting and our budgeting rules as to how much we could really change the rules to capture that in dollars and in a PAYGO sense. But I think that, that is somewhat beside the point. The real point is, what do we as a nations need to do to make sure that we're giving our kids the best, possible start so that we have the best possible workforce and a society that we can be proud of? What does that cost and what's the best way to raise those resources to do that?

An I think that it's somewhat cliche to say in the richest country in the history of the world, even with our current economic problems, we can afford to do things that are important. But I think it's not the case that we can't afford to do things like invest in early childhood education. We just have to make it a priority. And we have to make it a priority and be willing to pay for it.

FRANK: From my perspective, children are always dependent. There's no such thing as a child who isn't dependent.

LOTT: The economists I think have told us these high-quality, early-care programs for at-risk kids that save $16 for every dollar spent, $11 in crime savings. That's $16 comes from not being on welfare. Crime savings paying for them in prison (ph) and I know this is probably a bad think to say in a budget meeting, but, instead (ph) of looking at money, these are people's lives. These are kids that are people who are living their lives in prison, and these are victims that we could save from becoming a victim. Maybe saving someone's life by investing in this child from keeping his from killing somebody later on where we lost not only that victim, we've lost that person that's now going to spend the rest of his life in prison. BESHAROV: I'm just going to echo what Sharon suggested. It's a Pandora's Box because when you get into an argument about if I build that bridge, or if I buy that tank, you know, what's the long-term payoff? Or does that not help me balance the budget.

And I also want to ask Mike on (ph), on I agree with you completely about what happens with the employers of lower-wage workers. And that's another reason why we have to get these incentives right, because and that is clearly the case, that certain employers take advantage of the fact that we as a government are providing subsidies for workers, and then, therefore, not paying them what they ought to be paid, their market value.

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman?

SPRATT: Thank you, (inaudible).

(UNKNOWN): Thank you.

SPRATT: At this point, I would like to ask unanimous consent to the members who did not have the opportunity to ask questions, would just have at least a week, seven days to submit questions for the record.

If there are no further questions, let me thank our witnesses once again. We've got the bookends right here of this discussion. And we've had a healthy, vigorous discussion today and it leaves us a lot of grit for our mill as we look from the prospects of drawing up a budget resolution which we can pass.

Mr. McGovern, would you like to say anything?

MCGOVERN: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and members of this committee for participating in this hearing. And again, I will say, I will end as I began saying that hunger is a political condition. We have the tools to end it. We need to develop a plan. And we need to end it. This is a moral question. And I appreciate the testimony of all the panelists. Thank you.

(UNKNOWN): Thank you.

FRANK: Thank you for the opportunity.

SPRATT: (Inaudible)?

(UNKNOWN): Just I want to say thank you to you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the panelists. And I think one of the points that was revamping what the nutrition programs look like. We are going to have that opportunity with the child and nutrition bill when it comes for your authorization.

I would also say in the farm bill, we appropriated $1.2 billion for fruit and vegetable programs. Let's move (ph) through our schools. I think we have to look at what our children are eating, and make the appropriate changes in what is nutritional and when does it end (ph). And we have to not underfund a program. We have to give it the resources that it needs for it to be successful (ph).

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SPRATT: In all fairness, Ms. Lummis.

LUMMIS: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank the witnesses.

I want to echo the remarks of the previous speaker. It is also good for sustaining family farms and ranches to have good quality produce, fruits and vegetables available for the health and benefits of the people in this country, wealthy and poor, and it sustains a very vital component of this nation's backbone.

So thank you again very much for this hearing, Mr. Chairman.

SPRATT: Once again, thank you, we look forward to working with you on the problems which we've discussed today. Thank you very much for your input.

END

Copyright 2009 ProQuest Information and Learning All Rights Reserved Copyright 2009 CQ Transcriptions, LLC