Chicken-fried steak and lumpy mashed potatoes used to epitomize the "gross school lunch," which would incite a student to plead with his parents for a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. I'm sure some school lunches still create this kind of disdain among our students today. For others, however, a chicken-fried steak might be their best meal of the day.

Sadly, not every family in Southern Missouri can afford a school lunch for their children each day.

For this reason, I am working in Congress to expand the National School Lunch Program to include more low-income and underpriviledged children. My colleagues from both sides of the aisle in the U.S. House of Representatives and I have introduced legislation to make more children eligible for the free school lunch program and to place students from the reduced-price lunch program in the free lunch program.

The reduced-price lunch program would be phased out over the next five years under our bill, eventually providing students from families between 130 and 185 percent of the poverty level with free, nutritious meals.

On the Senate side, Senator Elizabeth Dole from North Carolina and Sen. Pat Roberts from Kansas have taken up this cause as well, and if there are two Senators who know the importance of ending malnutrition and hunger in America, it is them. Our bipartisan legislation will bring many more students to the lunch table.

More than 300 organizations have joined to support this effort, including the National PTA. The groundswell of support for expansion of the National School Lunch Program is in response to an urgent problem in our nation.

Some of our children are underfed and malnourished, and they face unnecessary challenges at school because of it.

Millions of American children do not get the nutrition they need at breakfast and lunch to focus on learning in the next part of the school day. No matter how good the faculty is at their school, hungry students cannot learn on empty stomachs. Just because a child is poor doesn't mean she is not entitled to the American Dream and the education to attain it.

A national epidemic of childhood obesity can even be traced, in part, to unhealthy eating habits by children while they are at school. The healthy food not eaten at school lunch is too often replaced by serving upon serving of snack foods and sweets. Instead of snacks, these foods become meals.

If these young scientists, fledgling public servants, and aspiring business leaders do not get proper nutrition now, American society will pay the difference down the road. Their cure for cancer, new idea for public policy, and revolutionary inventions will go undreamt now, and unrealized later.

With the bounty of food we produce in Southern Missouri and around the country, there is no reason for a young student to be hungry at school.

Economists like to say that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and they are right, because American taxpayers will foot the small bill for this legislation. Instead, we should think of the cost in terms of putting our agricultural produce to good use, reducing ag surpluses, and expanding a domestic market for value-added food products. Need I even mention feeding hungry schoolchildren?

I am sorry to disappoint the economists, but for these low-income families, there is such a thing as a free lunch, and there is no good reason not to give it to them.

And besides, I always liked the chicken-fried steak.