Free Republic

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Tuesday that his agency is looking for “creative ways” to give public school students access to more meals, including a way to provide them breakfast, lunch and dinner year round. “We have focused on efforts to try to figure out ways in which we can expand in those time periods when youngsters may not have access to school meals,” Vilsack said in remarks at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. That includes giving students access to meals “across the school day, across the school year and across the calendar year,” he...

First lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday made a rare foray into a Capitol Hill dispute, using a White House event to rally support for school meal nutrition rules that Republicans are pushing to loosen. The first lady successfully lobbied for those standards in 2010, and has since become the public face of this and other initiatives aimed at improving the dietary habits of children. But some schools have complained the rules are too restrictive and costly -- and House Republicans have a new bill aimed at addressing those concerns. An agriculture spending bill approved by a House subcommittee last week...