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tv   Agriculture HHS Secretaries on Nutrition Program Waivers  CSPAN  June 11, 2025 12:11am-12:48am EDT

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>> first of all, welcome. my name is brooke rawlins. i had the great honor of being a president trumps cabinet alongside my friend secretary bobby kennedy. we have somome incredible guest today. the governors of indiana and arkansas. of course our great congressman from indiana. let me just start with this. today is a great day for american taxpayers and for the people of indiana, arkansas, idaho and utah. it is a sad fact that over 75% of american youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military servivice because o obesity, poor physical fitness or mental health challenges. think about that. 75%. over 350,000 american children have been diagnosed with
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diabetes and autism spectru disorder impacts one and 31 children by the age of eight. as the maha moms in the room and those listening nond i consider myself one of those with my four teenagers, you can see on the wall, as the moms in the room and otherse no behind these statistics are moms and dads of sons and daughters, neighbors and coworkers. i have l long said along with or president and others that agriculture is at the core of the solution. american farmers produce the best, the safest and the most affordable bnty in the history of the world. since my confirmation, this department is encouraged states to think differently and creatively about how to solve the many health issues facing americans. in fact within the first hour of being sworn in by justice clarence thomas came back to this office, sat at that desk inside the very first letter that i sent out which is to all
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50 governors around this great country asking them to be our partners in the innovative solutions that are necessary to work towards thi common goal. one way as we know and why we are here today is disallowingng taxpayer-funded benits to purchase unhealthy items like soda, candy and other junk food. snap is a supplemental nutrition program made to provide food benefits to low income families to supplement their grocery budget so that they can aord the nutritious food essential to health and well-being. this is what is stated word for wo and the law and president trumps usda will deliver. so, today, i am proud to sign three more waivers. idaho, utah and arkansas. this brings the total count to six. and we have a few more working through technical assistance including colorado, kansas, west virginia, texas, ohio, florida
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and louisiana. i continue to encourage states to be our laboratories of innovation just as our founding fathers envisioned 249 years ago thinking how they can promote healthy families and healthy communities to gather and in partnership with us here in washington. i appreciate the historic partnership between usda and hhs , collaboration with our wonderful partners at the domestic policy council at the whitese and the visionary leadership of governor braun and governor sanders. we, together, or doing something about it. we at usda have also worked with america's dairy producers to voluntarily r remove artificial colors from products soldo k- 12 rules for the upcoming school year and even in the private sector tyson foods has committed to voluntarily removing petroleum dies from their products. to date, usda has purchased over
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$300 million of fresh seafood, fruits and vegetables from domest reducers through the agricultural marketing service section 32 program to distribute to food banks and nutrition assistance programs aroround ths great country. secretary kennedy and i continue to work diligently in crafting a new dietary guidelines for amerans which are said to be released very soon. way ahead of the current deadline. the nutrition advice through those dietary guidelines must be sound, simple and clear. these guidelines will prioritize whole healthy and nutritious food such as dairy, fruits, vegetables and meats and recommen limitations on unhealthy foods. more to come. president trumpet all my friends have known, here know that our current health outcomes especially for our children are unsustainable. and that american agriculture again is at the heart of the solution. i a am so proudo stand here
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today at usda alongside secretary kennedy, governor sanders, governor braun and so many other governors, governor cox from utah, governor little from idaho who cannot be here today but are with us and will soon get these waivers. so, congressman baird as we work to make america healthy again, especially knowing that the best is yet to come. i would like to turn it over to my partner in this effort secretary bobby kennedy of hhs. thank you all. >> thank you, secretary rawlins. when i was a little boy living in this city, my uncle was president, i was 10 years old. chronic disease r rate in our country was around 3%. we spent zero on chronic disease chronic disease in our children is up to 60%. we spent about $1.7 trillion a a year treating it. the cost is going up 2%.
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faster in our economy i growing it is unsustainable. secretary rawns pointed out about 75 for an ascent of our kids cannot provide for military service. the injuries are much deeper. we have a whole generation that isis plagued by auto immune diseases by neurological diseases, by allergic diseases, food allergies, peanut allergies and et cetera. fertility in our children has dropped dramatically. girls are reaching puberty at six years old. american teenage boys have sperm counts that are about 50% of 65 -year-old man. their testosterone is half of what is 65-year-old man has. this is a crisi for our country cancer rates are also exploding. we know that part of the problem
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is that we are not giving our children good food. th exposure coming from chemical additives in our food. and, and then just bad food, sugar drinks like soda spirit and for 20 yrs, democrats and republicans h have been talking about this on capitol hill sayiyi why are we paying for this. if somebody wants to drink a soda pop, we have no problem with that. we belie that you have freedom of choice in this country. taxpayer dollars should not be funding these industries store children ande pay for twice. we pay for through the snap program and we pay for it later on with diabetes and obesity. and we pay for that through medicaid and medicare. president trump has asked us too make america healthy again. the first time in our history we have a secretary of agriculture
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of usda broke rawlins who has the courage and gumption to actually do what people have been talking about for years and years and years on both sides of the aisle. one of the reasons thi has not happened before is because the lobbying, thehe power of these industries, the sugar industry, particularly sugar soda, secretary rawlins told me as he came to my office and i said what did you tell him and she said, we are paying for nutrition and there is no nutrition in your product. and one of the leaders of the group said, well, this program is not about nutrition. and she said it is called the supplemental nutrition assistance program. it is about nutrition and there is no nutrition in the buttocks. well, you shouldot be paying for them with taxpayer money. president trump is not only
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promising to make america healthy again a and acting on tt promise, but also he takes very seriously his responsibility to be a steward over american finances. and this is money wasted. it is money that is poisoning people. poisoning a generation, the poorest kids in our country. and then we pay a high price for that and the explosion of chronic disease. i am very grateful for your leadership and your partner. not only partnership but also friendship. working on the dietary guideles. we are shrinking the dietary guidelines from what president biden gave us 453 pages that reflect all of the industry interference and influence. that drove fruit loop to the top of the food pyramid t the docto,
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physicians, school lunch programs. military. dietary guidelines that are for five pages written in plain english that people can understand. we can start giving our kids good food again and food is medicine and we will start making healthier by giving them bett food and not paying for the food that is making them sicker. it makes no sense. i want to thank the governors, we have been all over the country, west v virginia, arizo, utah and working with these governors. we are standing up now and petitioning to secretary rawlins for snap waivers. people have answered the call and we are very, very happy with that. we have two of the leaders, i think, governor sanders, huckabee, sanders and governor here today. i wanted to thankor the leadership on this issue.
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two of them have made it now to finish line. i want thank you, governor sanders, for not only applying for the waiver but then doing the paperwork and jumping through all of the hoops that we need to get this across the finish line. i am very excited about the action of watching secretary rawlins sign a waiver today. >> thank you, sir. >> i will be very brief, but this is an exciting day, not just for the state of aansas but the entire country. for us to be able to take action there has been talk about for so long. to secretary kennedy's point, both sides o the aisle have said that this was a priority yet it took donald trump getting elected, putting the right team in place to make it happen. if you had said even one year ago that these waivers would be getting signed so quickly, i do not think most people would have believed you.
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the changes that this president is empowering his team to make for the betterment of all americans is something that is unprecedented. i love that i get to be part of this with my good friend secretary broke rawlins. we got to know each other workingg at the white house. i know that this is something very personal to her. this is not just because it falls under her purview as a secretary but because she is a mom. something that was what we initially bonded over his survivining working in the white house. working as working moms. so, the same way that i know she is inking about her own kids, that is one of the things that motivates me to see this get done and get across the finish line is the fact that i am a mom of three kids and i want something better for our kids. i think that that is what this president and the team that he has built are delivering on for the american people. we now have a food stamp program that is $119 billion a year and
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$27 billion of that pgram being spent on soft drinks, candy and unhealthy desserts. it is insane to think that in the same building that we administer the food stamp program in the state of arkansas where we give out these food stamps and provide what is supposed to be nutritional assistance is the same building where we are paying for all of the chronic disease that is taking place in the state of arkansas. over one third of our population is either diabebetic or prediabetic. the fact that all of that takes place within a few feet of each other shows you just how backwards and how broke the system is. and now we have ended in a station that is actually doing something about it. we have secretary kennedy and secretary rawns. people who are not just talking about making changes, but are implementing change that is been needed desperately for decades here in this country. they are taking on special
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interest every single day and winning in a way that no other administration would have been able or willing to deal. and while brooke cheers for the wrong football team every fall, i think that she is cheering for the right things to happen. i had to get that in there. [laughter] she is cheering for the right things happen in this country and there is nobody that i have greater confidence in helping us makeure that our kids and o country are healthier. and that has to be something that we start focusing on. not only because we want our quality of life to be better, but we are bankrupting our country because of what we are doing in the way we are operatingg. so, i applaud the leadership of secretary kennedy and secretary rawlins in bringing so much awareness to this, but also not just talking about. taking action and getting something don. i am proud to stand alongside other conservative goverrs and members of congress who are stepping up and getting things
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done. governor ron has been areat leader i thi effor and proud to stand alongside him and see both of us get this through to the finish line. with that, i will turn it over to my good friend governor braun >> thank you. some of you know i spent the last six years in the u.s. senate. on the scented health committee. i can tell you, in those six years, we have seen more impacting health in these first six months by a lararge measure. i drift back to 17 years ago when running a small business was really starting to grow and how every year, you look at what the consequences are ofot stressing preventn and wellness. wellness meaning food quality. well, your health insurance costs. lucky to only go up five-10% each year. i got sick and tired of that fact and.
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got involved in that renewal meeting and probably the proudest thing i've done in business, our government would be having a healthcare system when i got all the truth out of the insurance companies, why don't you start if you want to change things, start promoting wellness and prevention. because they knew that i was going to do something different with that insurance plan. i was runng 17 years now based upon that and getting consumers, employees engaged in their own well-being. we had not had a premium increase at that business. i have not heard of that anywhere. that is how you fix a broken healthcare system. based on expensive remediation, not trying to make it sometng you do not need to spend money on in the first place. this administration is hitting at the core of it. what ails us i in terms of our heal well, we spent way too much money on trying to fix bad behavior and when i was able to
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gigive an executive order, it ss we are not spending government monday and indiana on sugary drinks and candy, what could make more common sense. thank you too for bringing it to the forefront because you just heard of three, four, five, six governors doing it. another three or four ready to. this should cascade a across the cotry and with this kind of energy, thi kind of enthusiasm, that is howe fix the underlying issues. thank you so much for doing it. it's now my pleasure to introduce fellow hoosier congressman jim baird. >> and q governor. good afternoon. so, i think secretary rawlinson secretary kennedy for allowing
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me to be with you today. i thank youor all the hard work to make america healthy again and deliver a president trump successful agenda. thank you to indiana's greatest governor mike ron. and arkansas governor sarah huckabee sanders for being here and leading on this issue. ....
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you. >> thank you to the cable and satellite companies that provide c-span to viewers as public service.
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[inaudible conversations] >> and finally at least for today, more in the next few weeks, goverr spencer of utah. >> all right. with that, everyone, we will open it up for questions. >> hi, secretary nicky >> okay. yes. [inaudible]
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>> there's two areas of partnership and those are key areas of making our food supply better. one of those is program to get all of the unhealthy food off -- different states looking at different formulations. some of the states are trying to get of rid of candies and sodas. some states have targeted sodas exclusively. we are hoping eventually to expand those categories to include other perhaps ultra processed food or whatever. that's going to take a while. the other issue that we're dealing with and i think it's a
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game-changer, dietary guidelines, people are getting whole food and take ultra prococessed foods off the menu. we are going to address the added sugge arse in the foods and those dietary guidelines are important because they govern ultimately and they drive the school lunch programs. other government purchases and they will have an immediate impact in getting healthier food or wholesome food to the american people. >> yeah. i'm just going to say something very qckly and i will give the mic to governor sanders and the reason while secretary kennedy and i are very diligently working on the dietary guidelines with our incredible staffs from both sides, those will be out sooner rather than later as secrary kennedy mentioned, it will drive a change in the way we do school lunches, et cetera, around the nation, but ultimately, again, as the founders intended the
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states are thehe laboratories of innovation, they are t guardians at the gate and take guidelines and hopefully innovate in a way that moves their states, their population toward the goal of making america healthy again. so governor sanders and her team in arkansas has been innovative on this. i'm going to ask her to talk, this is not a democrat or republican thing. this is a making america healthy again working across party lines. >> thank you. onee of t the things that we hae recognized and something that we've done in our state and i think anybody who has hungry kids know that hungry kids don't learn and by really looking at how we do a better job from a state perspective of making sure kids aren't starting the day hungry. one of the first things we did was open up free breakfast to every single student in the state of arkansas in addition to
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lunch program that has always existed in partnership with usda. we want them to be fueled with healthy nutritious foods that will help pay attention and be less distracti and also meet the hunger need while at the same t time supporting one of te most important industries not just the city but state ag industry. by home-grown products it's only way to hel students to have more nututritious foods but hels support one of the most important industries in the state. big believer if a country has to rely on anybody else for food, that's a big problem and it takes away one o of the things at makes america's ability to be free. if we can't feed ourselves, fight forurselves and fuel ourselves, then we become
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independent, dependent on other countries that is a big problem. so looking for innovative ways we can support our agriculture community ile addressing some of the food insecurity problems in our state has been a big priority for us and some of the things that we've been working clcloselyith with usda and guidelines will help inform decisions for states as they're looking at a lot of those food programs. >> wall street. do you expect any changes of changes to saturated fats or changes in attitude toward them? >> we are looking at everything right now. i don't want to make news today but you will be hearing a whole lot more in the coming weeks with the goal really in the next month or two having the full set out again many months ahead of schedule but this is how important we think it is. everything is on the table, everything is being discussed and we lock forward to putting out a guideline that will
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hopefully describe the next round of health for our country. >> yes, you next and then -- >> thank you,ori state of indiana, and i'd like to -- i know that we all agree it's not nutritional and healthy so as this administration works in partnership with the state, what are we dng to incentivize and prioritize fruits and vegetables? i see it with programs like -- but i also see a lot of common sense opppportunities like gettg more flavorful fruits and having tables. american farmers have made tremendous investments in all of the innovations to really bring flavor forward in fruits and having the abilities and that's something i'm hoping that all o the leaders here today can take in consideration. >> you make a really good point.
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if we are recommending foods that the kids don't want to eat and ends up in the trash can, we haven't done any good to anybody. if you have a lot of inagreed nineties the food that you can't pronounce, it's probably not too go for you. but the school for school lunch programs is locally and those decisions are going to be in the hands of the governors, the school district, et cetera. we will do our best to support that by giving them good science-base compliance on whatt kind of portions they should be eating, what levels of meat,
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vegetables, grains and food and you pointed out saturated fats. >> and whole milk back in schools. >> love it. so i can tell you i've been on this whole idea of presentation, wellness and holistic health and i am going to invite stakeholders like yourself and others to come in the governor's residence or capitol, i want to hear about ideas, i am encouraging businesses that have to pay most of the bill on the private side of health insurance mostl again to remediate chronic illness. in my state i'm going wcome everyone to come in and get ids together because it's not a flash in the pan. i want to hear it and get it from the grassroots up and i'm sure you're going to see a different variation of that from the other 49 governors as well. >> that's right. yes, sir.
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>> secretary -- will the arkansas waiver allow the food stamp beneficiary to buy hot rotissere chicken. >> that's a significant pivot from before. obviously getting nutritious food and hot chicken are a major part of that, but we are moving in that direction, thank you. yes. >> what other -- secretary kennedy, what other foods -- [inaudible] >> what other foods do you want to expand waiver to and governors woul you be open to expanding that and -- what the ultimate goal is. [inaudible] >> i can't answer what other
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foods are going to be the produf negotiations, deliberations but a lot of people in our agencies. in terms of changes to this has been a long-time coming. government oversight committee found that, for example, that year which was 2003, one example that four of the five people who had rotary virus vaccine had direct financial interest in the vaccine. one of those individualsls voted the rotary virusus onto the vaccine a sold his rotary virus vaccine for $186 million. he said he won the virus that. year said that 97% of the people had undisclosed concepts.
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people have been known about this for years. probably the worst example of malevalant malpractice without doing safety studies. in 1986 11 vaccines on the schedule, today a compliant child must take between 69 and 92 vaccines to stay inchool in some statetes and precensing placebo control trialal that is just malpractice. so the people who are in charge of that are now gone. we're going to be bringing people on the panel, not any vaxxers, people who are credential scicientists, highly credential physicians who are going to do evidence-base
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medicine, who are going to be objective and we are going to follow the science and make critical public health determinations for our children based upon the best science. >> yes, gohead. [inaudible] >> we are working with all the states on the metrics. it's an amazing question because often these changes are made at government level without any real metrics in place so we are working state by state how we measure what this looks like, but listen, this is a long-term effort that is bipartisan or even nonpartisan i should say that ultimately at the end of the day the rl metric is in the health of our communities but we will be looking step by step and i'm sorry, tell me who you were with, ap, great, thank you. great question, we will be talking about metrics moving
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forward but we are already in discussionons on what that looks li. yes, in the back. >> daily caller -- [inaudible] >> the american people have commented -- it's over. it should have never been done and it won't be done again. >> one quick thing because it's really important and governor sanders mentioned this, but it goes directly tohe heart of your question. if our -- if we don't have food security in this country, we will not have security. and so kash patel in the fbi and pam bondi, doj, finding and arresting those suspects is very important but it's just the first step. we have a wholesale look at
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everything t usda, every piece of the agriculture community to ensure that we can feed ourselves, fuel ourselves, et cetera. there is no america unless our food security, ourood products that we can feed ourselves, that is through the robust support of our farmers and our ranchers and ensuring that we continue to not only feed ourselves but feed the world and that is a very complicated complex layered approach. you'll be hearing more from me just a little teaser in the next week or two on massive new initiative that will look at that specifically. food security is national security. so that's just one step that you'll be heaearing a lot fm us moving forward. thank you all for being here at the people's department, great to have you all, will be updating you regularly. thank y'all so much.
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>> on wednesday, republin and democratic members of congress participate in the annual congssional baseball gamame. a bipartisan tradition to benefit local dc charities that das back to 1909. we will have live coverage starngt 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. c-span now our free mobile video app a online at c-span.org. >> c-span, democracy unfiltered. we are funded by these television companies and more including media com. >> we're on a mission to make small town america bigger than anyone ever dreamed that's why at media com w we are pushing te limits, increasing speed, improving reliability and working with whatever it takes to make it happen. >> media com supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a

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