When it comes to financing nutritional programs, senior citizens in Southeast Missouri and across the country want their own slice of the pie, and they are calling in their orders to Washington.

Senior citizens disagreed when the U.S. Congress began proposed lumping funds for school hot lunches, food stamps, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and senior citizens nutrition sites into a block grant to be awarded to the states.

The plan was to immediately slice away the 5 percent officials said was spent on "federal bureaucratic hurdles" before serving the food money to the states.

Glenda Hoffmeister of SEMO Area Agency on Aging in Cape Girardeau said, while no official announcement has been made the decision was made earlier this week to remove the senior nutrition funding from the food assistance block grant in the Personal Responsibility Act.

Senior citizens and their advocates became concerned because there were no specific guidelines on how the money would be distributed. They got involved in the efforts to get the proposal rejected.

Legislators were hit with a blitz from senior citizens similar to the following ones made by directors of area senior citizens centers.

Georgia Fiske of the Northside Nutrition Center in Poplar Bluff believes the initial plan of "putting all the nutrition things in one hat" was not practical.

Programs like food stamps, WIC and school lunches have to be funded at a certain level and if the funds run short the senior citizens would be the ones taking the cut, she said.

Fiske quickly added, the Older Americans Act provides much from than food. It provides transportation and in-home services regardless of their means to pay.

Fiske said, all the other programs's clients have to take a means tests to determine if their income qualifies them for the program.

"If you had to have a means test on everything, a very large portion of the senior citizens would not be able to get the programs they need," she said. "I don't think anyone should be punished because they worked hard and got something in their old age."

If the senior citizens have to conform to a means test, "they are going to be intimated," said Sandra Barnett, Puxico center director. "They are not going to like that at all. People in small towns really have a lot of pride. They are just that kind of people."

Barnett said, "all these things sound wonderful" but "when it really gets down to the day of doing it, the smaller centers _ we suffer for it."

Barnett is "afraid" grouping all nutrition programs together "will definitely cost the smaller centers." Her center, where about 40 eat daily, is "just now getting back on it's feet _ in the black not in the red."

"We are doing really well right now," but it seems like everytime they get "two steps ahead" they take "five steps back."

She described her center's homebound program as "a part of their lives. This is their fellowship; it is not just for the meals. They love one another. They are like a family."

Minnie Rasmussen directs the Broseley center, where about 35 people eat on a daily bases. Her staff also prepares and carters the 40 meals served at Puxico and 20 for the Fisk Center.

"Actually, at our little center we serve quite a few people," Rasmussen said. The centers provide free health screenings and exercise program, "it is not just the food."

An average of 45 people eat daily at the Qulin center, directed by Doris Hill.

"Our center fluctuates," Hill said. Some days her staff provides for "77 and some days it may be 36. We deliver out in the country and other days we can't because we don't have volunteers. We need volunteers to help us."

The Van Buren Center's director, Marsha Towner said, "it would definitely affect our program. We feel we would be last getting any funding."

Her center serves a range of 80-90 meals a day including those delivered to homebound residents.

Their request for ala carte lunch service was backed by the assistant secretary for aging and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Hoffmeister said.

She said, "according to the staff of the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, the decision was made earlier this week by Speaker Gingrich, Rep. Goodling, chair of the opportunities committee; Rep. Roberts, chair of the agriculture committee; Rep. Emerson, chair of the agriculture subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over food stamps."

"We did an all-out effort two or three weeks ago; we don't want the Older Americans Act to be a welfare reform," Hoffmeister said.

Hoffmeister quoted Assistant Secretary of Aging Fernando Torres-Gil as saying, consolidating federal food assistance programs "would have severe consequences for older Americans who are nutritionally and socially at risk and who depend upon these meals to remain independent. To put this program at risk would be a cruel gesture to an aging America."