At a news conference Wednesday highlighting school nutrition expansions in Democrats’ proposed domestic budget, Vermont’s U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders urged his colleagues to vote ”yes” on the budget quickly, saying “the stakes are enormous.”
Sanders was joined by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and other stakeholders in St. Johnsbury to tout provisions in President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan that would — among many other things — expand nutritional assistance to schools, enabling more children to receive free and reduced-price meals.
Those provisions are important, Sanders said, though they’re “a very small part of this overall bill.” The multitrillion-dollar package also includes proposals to address climate change, establish universal and free pre-kindergarten, continue child tax credits via direct payments to families, invest in affordable housing and more.
“What we are trying to do is address the needs that working people are facing in America that have been neglected for decades,” Sanders said. “So this is a complicated bill.”
Sanders plays a key role in negotiations as chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He’s made headlines sparring with moderate U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, who have been pushing to scale back the proposed social programs to keep the price tag down.
With a razor-thin 50-50 majority in the Senate, Sanders needs every single Democrat in the Senate to vote “yes.” In the House, the margin of error isn’t much larger.
“That means that any one member can say, ‘Well, you know what, I don’t like that provision,’ and you’ve got to go back to the drawing board,” he said. “So this has been an enormously difficult process but … the stakes are enormous and we cannot fail.”
Should the budget pass with current proposals to expand nutrition assistance programs, every school in Vermont could provide free meals to all of its students, Sanders and Welch said. And with universal eligibility, they said children may feel more comfortable taking their free meals.
For many children who rely on school for meals, a school closure or mandatory quarantine due to Covid means they won’t eat a healthy meal, if any at all.
Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, said the provisions present a “transformational opportunity” to address childhood and family hunger.
“There’s no going back to some normal before this pandemic when it comes to schools and school meals,” she said. “There will only be taking food away from kids who are getting it now and we must not let that happen and we don’t have to let that happen.”
The news conference came less than a week after Welch and 227 of his House colleagues passed a $1 trillion nationwide infrastructure package, from which Vermont is set to receive $2.2 billion for roads, bridges, water systems, broadband and more.
The package, which is on its way to the president’s desk for his signature, is one of two hallmark pieces of legislation championed by Biden’s White House, the second being the Build Back Better budget.