[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 178 (Friday, November 16, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14600-S14601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             THE FARM BILL

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, today the Senate will break for the 
Thanksgiving holiday. We will all travel back to our States. We will 
work in our offices. We will move around our States. We will probably 
celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with our families and our friends.
  Many of us who are so very blessed will gather together next Thursday 
at tables surrounded by family, echoing with laughter, overflowing with 
food.
  For too many families in my home State of Ohio and across the Nation 
next Thursday will be very different. These families, many of whom work 
full-time, simply do not earn enough each month to survive without the 
assistance of food stamps and food banks and help from churches and 
help from other organizations.
  Too many families suffering from layoffs--layoffs caused by plant 
closings, the offshoring of jobs, and the downsizing of American 
industry--are now solely reliant on food stamps and food banks to feed 
their families. Adding anguish to heartache, food banks, the last hope 
many have for getting even just one meal a day, are finding themselves 
running short on food.
  Yesterday's Cincinnati Enquirer told the story of Denise Arnold, a 
mother from Roselawn, OH, a suburb of Cincinnati. Since losing her job, 
and while looking for another job, Ms. Arnold has fallen behind on her 
rent and worries about becoming homeless. She has applied for food 
stamps, but that process takes time, and she has a son to feed.
  Ms. Arnold visits the St. Vincent de Paul food pantry industry to get 
what food she can for her family. She told the reporter: It is really 
rough. I have been so scared. The pantry once was able to offer a 
week's supply of food to those in need. Now, because of budget cuts and 
inadequate funding, this pantry must ration out, as so many others do, 
to their visitors, a few days' worth at a time, not a full week.
  According to yesterday's newspaper article, food pantries across the 
region have similar stories to report. On this floor, I have shared the 
story of Rhonda Stewart, a single mother from Butler County, OH, who 
relies on food stamps to feed her family.
  Ms. Stewart bravely shared her story before the Senate Agriculture 
Committee several months ago as we began the process of writing the 
2007 farm bill. She told us she has a young son and is fairly recently 
divorced. Her husband--her ex-husband--has lost his job and is not able 
to support the son or his former wife.
  She has a full-time job, only making about $9 an hour. She is 
president of the local PTA and volunteers for the Cub Scouts. She 
teaches Sunday school. She does everything we ask of a citizen and a 
parent, and she is a food stamp beneficiary.
  Yet, she told us, at the beginning of the month, she and her son--she 
cooks pork chops once or twice that first week. That is his favorite 
meal. By the middle of the month, she takes him out to a fast food 
restaurant perhaps once or twice. By the end of the month, she always 
runs out of money. She sits at the dining room or the kitchen table 
with her son, and that last couple of days of the month at dinnertime 
he is eating dinner, and she is sitting there not eating.
  He says: Mom, what is wrong?
  She says: I am not feeling well, or I am not hungry. She said it 
happens month after month.
  The truth is, food stamps provide a benefit of about $1 per person 
per meal. So Rhonda Stewart was getting $6 per day for food stamps. She 
traveled to Washington to let us know what mattered most to her and to 
her family and to families like hers. She had every right to expect 
that we would listen and we would hear her.
  In 2006, more than 35 million Americans went hungry. We must ask 
ourselves, how many more will go hungry next Thursday and Friday and 
Saturday and Sunday and into the rest of the holiday season?
  I raise this issue today because at this moment we are debating in 
this Chamber legislation that literally means the difference between 
food and hunger for Ms. Arnold, Ms. Stewart, and millions of families 
in this country, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of families in my 
home State of Ohio like theirs.
  In a nation wealthy as ours, eradicating hunger, eliminating poverty, 
investing in families should not be a political issue. It is not 
Republican versus Democrat. It is food and shelter versus Americans who 
aren't as fortunate as all of us in this body, as the staff, the 
Senators, all of us. This is a moral obligation, a duty that flows from 
compassion and the very reason we have been sent here as public 
servants.
  In November of last year, families in my State of Ohio, as they did 
in the State of the Presiding Officer, sent a loud and clear message 
that they wanted change. They demanded in no uncertain terms that the 
priorities championed here in Washington better reflect their own back 
home. Given their call for change and the unquestionable understanding 
of challenges facing families across the country, one must pause and 
reflect on what we are actually doing here. We have a responsibility to 
think about the priorities being debated this week, this very day as 
part of the farm bill.
  On the one hand, we have been arguing for weeks about how many tens 
of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, an industry gets out of 
this bill. We have been arguing over profit margins. On the other hand, 
we have in this legislation language that would fund food banks by an 
additional $110 million each year. We have legislation that would 
increase food stamp funding by $5 billion over 5 years and would help 
millions of new families with food assistance. We have the opportunity 
in this bill to validate for Ms. Arnold and Ms. Stewart and the 
millions of mothers like them across the country that their voices do 
in fact matter. These are not issues being discussed only within these 
walls. This is a question of principle. It is a call to action the 
public understands very well. The public understands how important are 
the issues of hunger, social justice, investing in families, at every 
level of income.
  I applaud Ohio food banks and businesses such as First Energy and the 
Kroger Company for their dedication and initiative. This year First 
Energy and its employees, as part of their Harvest for Hunger campaign, 
collected the equivalent of nearly 2 million meals. This week the 
Kroger Company helped jump-start a Hunger is Unacceptable campaign in 
greater Cincinnati.
  Local social service agencies in the area are pooling resources to 
help fight hunger more effectively. What these stories say to me is 
that people back home get it. They get it in Cincinnati, in Columbus, 
and in Cleveland. It is time that Washington gets it.
  I strongly urge my colleagues to remember that budgets and bills are 
more than ink on paper. They are a set of priorities, and they are 
about our values. I strongly encourage my colleagues not to delay in 
passing the farm bill and to remember how many families are depending 
on them for us to stand up for them.
  I fully expect and encourage families back home to continue watching 
what we do and to hold all of us accountable for our actions.
  I want to say to Ms. Arnold--with a very special mention to Rhonda 
Stewart--that so many of us in this Chamber hear you. We are fighting 
for you, and we will not give up.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from North Dakota.

[[Page S14601]]

  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Ohio for his 
service on the Agriculture Committee. He has brought new vision, new 
vigor to the committee. We very much appreciate his service there. This 
has been a difficult challenge, but I think we can be very proud of the 
result. This bill is fiscally responsible, and at the same time it does 
begin the orientation of priorities. It gives additional funding to not 
only conservation but to nutrition, where the Senator from Ohio has 
been a real leader. Over and over he has reminded us of not only our 
responsibility to fellow Americans, but a moral responsibility we have 
to make certain we change some of these programs that are so critically 
important to people all across America.
  It is so often overlooked that the vast majority of the money in the 
farm bill, 66 percent of the funding, goes for nutrition. That is where 
the vast majority of the spending goes. We can be very proud of the 
changes that have been made. We have added over $5 billion above the 
baseline for nutrition, to begin to address things that have not been 
changed for 30 years. The Senator from Ohio has been a leader, somebody 
who prodded us all to be better than we have been. I thank the Senator 
from Ohio for his leadership.

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