[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 88 (Wednesday, June 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H3761-H3762]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                  SNAP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Massie). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Last week I went shopping. I wouldn't exactly call it a 
spree. What I did was I went to one of the lowest cost grocery stores 
in the Eugene-Springfield area where I live to try and purchase a 
week's worth of food for $31.50. That's the average SNAP benefit for a 
single individual.
  There are those on the other side of the aisle with regard to the 
FARRM Bill that will come up later today and say, This is the first 
place to cut: food assistance to hungry people, to kids, to seniors, to 
the unemployed, the disabled. That's where they want to cut first.

[[Page H3762]]

  I wonder how many of them have ever tried to budget for themselves or 
for their spouse and child at $31.50 per person for a week. It doesn't 
go too far. In fact, I ended up a little bit over because we 
miscalculated on weighing some apples. I had three apples, but I had to 
put one back and would have had to cut back a little bit more on the 
pasta to make the $31.50 budget limit.
  There are these incredible stereotypes out there about the SNAP 
program, the food assistance program formerly called food stamps, that 
all these people are on welfare. No. Actually, 92 percent of the people 
getting SNAP benefits are not on welfare. Half of them are children and 
22 percent are on Social Security or Social Security Disability. So 
they're either seniors or disabled. The rest are unemployed or 
underemployed. And at $31.50 a week--a benefit that the other side of 
the aisle wants to cut--many of these people now can't make it through 
the month. This is pretty paltry stuff if you look at it and you think 
about doing this week in and week out.
  Most people in Oregon--and Oregon is a lower cost State than many for 
food--run out sometimes in the third week of their benefits and they 
have to get emergency food assistance. Our food banks provided 1 
million boxes of emergency food assistance last year. Yet, those on 
that side of the aisle would begrudge these people, their children, 
these seniors, these disabled an adequate budget for a very minimal 
diet.

                              {time}  1010

  It's extraordinary to me.
  My State--and most people don't think of us this way--we are the 
fourth highest per capita in terms of food stamp utilization. Fourth 
highest per capita, because outside of our major urban areas, the 
economy has not recovered from the collapse that Wall Street caused in 
housing and other areas. We had recreational vehicles; that industry is 
gone. We had some high tech; that's moved on. We had a lot of 
construction, home building, wood products--pretty well decimated. The 
rural areas I have in my rural counties--real unemployment of 20 
percent. People are struggling to make ends meet, and we're going to 
cut their benefits? They want to work. Some of them are working, and we 
even have a higher minimum wage than most States, but it still won't 
get you through to the end of the month for your family. This is just 
outrageous.
  There are ways to cut this bill. We're going to stop paying--finally, 
at last, we're going to stop paying people not to grow things. But now 
we're going to have a new program of crop insurance. And some estimates 
are that this program--which goes to anybody with an unlimited income 
in this bill, that is, if you're a corporate farm and you earn $2 
million a year, the government is going to pay for 80 percent of your 
crop insurance cost. Eighty percent subsidy from the taxpayers. Why is 
that?
  We could cut back on the eligibility, and this would be a pretty big 
income for any farmer I know of. If you earn over a quarter-million 
dollars a year, go buy your own crop insurance. I think it even could 
be a little lower than that in my State and in most States. That would 
save as much money as they're going to save by eliminating food 
assistance to hungry kids, seniors, unemployed and underemployed, and 
disabled Americans. These are the cruelest cuts possible.
  I urge my colleagues to support the amendment later today which would 
restore these benefits.

                          ____________________