[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H2844-H2845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             END HUNGER NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today for the 12th time this year 
to talk about the need to end hunger now.
  I am honored to serve on the House Agriculture Committee, and last 
week the committee held a markup on H.R. 1947, the farm bill. I believe 
we need a farm bill that contains a smart, forward-thinking policy, a 
farm bill that ensures that farmers are able to make a living, a farm 
bill that benefits the American economy, a farm bill that ensures that 
the food grown in America makes it to the plates of every American, and 
a farm bill that isn't rife with fraud, waste, and abuse.
  The good news, Mr. Speaker, is that a component of that smart, 
forward-thinking policy already exists. It's called SNAP. This program 
ensures that 47 million people out of the 50 million hungry in this 
country are able to put at least some food on their tables when they 
otherwise couldn't do so. This program ensures that the food grown on 
our farms makes it to every American's table, not just the wealthy few.
  SNAP provides an economic catalyst because the SNAP benefit is spent 
in our local grocery stores and farmers' markets, generating jobs and 
revenue. Indeed, every SNAP dollar results in $1.72 in economic 
activity--an amazing return on our investment. And SNAP has one of the 
lowest error rates of any Federal program.
  But H.R. 1947 would undermine all of this. It cuts $20.5 billion from 
the program. That cut means that 2 million people would be kicked off 
of SNAP entirely. It means that 210,000 kids would be kicked off the 
free school meal program. It means that 850,000 people will see their 
SNAP benefits cut by $90 a month, and this is on top of a $25 a month 
cut for a family of four that will already take effect in November no 
matter what happens to the farm bill.
  You know, there was a time not so long ago when solving the problem 
of hunger in America was a bipartisan priority. Former Senators George 
McGovern and Bob Dole worked tirelessly in the 1970s to make America 
hunger-free. Their partnership brought us to the point where we nearly 
eradicated hunger altogether. And I will insert at the end of my 
remarks an op-ed from yesterday's New York Times highlighting this 
bipartisan work.
  Mr. Speaker, the problem today is that it has become far too 
fashionable in this House of Representatives to beat up on the poor. In 
fact, there is now a bipartisan effort to cut hunger programs. I'm sad 
to say that even some Democrats are willing to support this farm bill, 
even with these terrible SNAP cuts. Instead of moving forward together, 
we are moving backward.
  Mr. Speaker, the farm bill, with these SNAP cuts, is a bad piece of 
legislation. It's bad policy. It deserves to be defeated. Whatever good 
may be in this bill--from increased access to organic foods, to more 
humane treatment for animals, to increased job creation in 
agriculture--it is not an understatement to say that this bill will 
make hunger worse in America.
  For the life of me, I do not understand why we should be forced to 
choose between cutting access to food and providing jobs for our ailing 
economy. We can and we should achieve the joint mission of ending 
hunger now and creating jobs together. They are very much connected and 
should not be pitted against each other. But that's exactly what the 
farm bill would do--to the tune of $20.5 billion.

                              {time}  1030

  We should end hunger now, not make hunger worse. We need a 
comprehensive effort to end hunger now. We need Presidential 
leadership. We need a White House Conference on Food and Nutrition. And 
we need a Congress determined to address hunger in America and bring it 
to an end, not make it worse.
  Hunger in America is a political condition. Nothing demonstrates that 
more than this farm bill. We have

[[Page H2845]]

enough food to end hunger now; we just don't have the political will to 
do so. This effort to cut SNAP--to make hunger worse--must not stand.
  I hope my colleagues will join me in restoring these senseless cuts. 
Should that effort fail, I hope my colleagues will join me in defeating 
the farm bill when it is considered on the House floor. We can and we 
must do better.

                [From The New York Times, May 20, 2013]

There Was a Time When Ending Hunger Was a National Goal for Republicans 
                             and Democrats

                          (By Dorothy Samuels)

       ``That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land 
     such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable.'' So declared 
     Richard Nixon in May 1969 in his now widely forgotten 
     ``Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Program to 
     End Hunger in America.'' In that document, he summoned the 
     country to a new level of generosity and concern and laid out 
     a series of strong legislative steps and executive actions, 
     including a significant expansion of the food-stamps program.
       While campaigning for the White House in 1968, Mr. Nixon 
     did not focus on the existence of a serious hunger problem. 
     His conversion came as public calls to do something about 
     hunger rose--driven, in part, by Senator Robert Kennedy's 
     highly publicized trip to Mississippi in 1967 where he 
     encountered nearly starving children and the Rev. Dr. Martin 
     Luther King Jr.'s focus on hunger as part of the Poor 
     People's Campaign.
       During the '70s, another Republican leader, Senator Bob 
     Dole of Kansas, forged a partnership with George McGovern, 
     the South Dakota Democrat defeated by Mr. Nixon in 1972. They 
     helped pass legislation to improve the accessibility and 
     antifraud provisions of the food-stamps program. For example, 
     it eliminated a requirement that recipients buy food-stamp 
     coupons, a prohibitive burden for the lowest-income 
     Americans.
       That kind of dedicated bipartisan commitment to ending 
     hunger was light-years ago in American politics--before 
     President Ronald Reagan and, later, Speaker Newt Gingrich 
     made attacking food stamps a prime Republican obsession, and 
     certainly before moderate Republicans, a disappearing breed, 
     lived in fear of making any move that might provoke a primary 
     challenge from a Tea Party-supported candidate. The modern 
     food-stamps program, built with Republican and Democratic 
     support, succeeded in eliminating the most extreme pockets of 
     hunger in parts of the country.
       Today, the program remains an immensely important source of 
     support for low-income families and children living below or 
     near the poverty line. Still, some 50 million Americans live 
     in households that cannot consistently afford enough food, 
     even with the food-stamps program, now formally called the 
     Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
       Come November, temporary increases for food-stamp aid 
     approved in the 2009 economic recovery act are scheduled to 
     expire, which would result in a loss of about $25 in monthly 
     food stamps for a family of four. If anything, Washington 
     should be allocating more money to address tremendous unmet 
     needs.
       Yet, every Republican on the House Agriculture Committee 
     voted to approve an omnibus farm bill containing a $20 
     billion cut in food stamps over the next decade in the 
     program's $800 billion or so 10-year budget. While less 
     devastating than turning the program into a capped block 
     grant to the states, which the House Republicans have 
     previously endorsed, the cut is nearly five times the 
     reduction approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate 
     Agriculture Committee, which already is too much.
       The House bill's cuts would end food-stamp assistance for 
     nearly two million people, with the pain falling mainly on 
     low-income working families with kids and older Americans, 
     according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And 
     as many as 210,000 children would lose access to free school 
     lunches and breakfasts because eligibility for those meals is 
     tied to their family's receipt of food-stamp benefits.
       ``It is just not right,'' said Representative Jim McGovern, 
     a Massachusetts Democrat (no relation to George McGovern) 
     before his amendment to strike the cut was defeated. Not a 
     single Republican voted to approve it.

                          ____________________