[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 124 (Thursday, September 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H5663]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             DON'T CUT SNAP

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise to talk about this 
heartless and mean-spirited attempt by my colleagues on the other side 
of the aisle to cut $40 billion from the SNAP program--the food stamp 
program--that ensures that children, seniors, and poor Americans can 
put food on the table.
  Earlier this year, I participated in a food stamp challenge. We 
agreed for a period of 1 week to limit our expenditure for food to 
$4.50 a day. That's about the average amount that a food stamp 
recipient receives for food. And so trying to eat on $4.50 a day was a 
mind expander and an eye-opener for me because it helped me see how 
fortunate I was to not be one of the many millions of people who rely 
on food stamps for their nutrition.
  During that week that I was on that food stamp challenge, I went 
around to a number of food pantries where people were lined up, White 
and Black, Hispanic and Asian, awaiting the food truck or the tractor-
trailer to get there loaded with food so they could get some of it. 
People lined up several hours before the pantry actually opened just to 
get some food.
  So I can assure you that there are many people out there. And I spoke 
with many of them. I spoke with one woman who worked three part-time 
jobs that pay minimum wage. She was trying to take care of a family 
with that, and was still eligible and needed to have those food stamps.
  And so people have lost their jobs and have been offered and accepted 
new jobs after this economic meltdown caused by Wall Street. People 
lost jobs. They have accepted part-time jobs--cobbling a few part-time 
jobs together to try to make ends meet for the entire family. And they 
need those food stamps.

                              {time}  1100

  But what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle plan on doing 
is cutting $40 billion for this next year, 2014. They want to cut $40 
billion out of the budget.
  The budget is a statement of our values. If you can give farmers crop 
subsidies--$15 billion, $20 billion per year--and then, by 
congressional legislation, hide the identity of the recipients of those 
crop subsidy payments that you, the taxpayer, give to the insurance 
companies on behalf of the farmers; then what you do, you give the 
insurance companies, you offset their administrative and operating cost 
in operating that program, we pay them billions of dollars a year. So, 
as it ends up, over $100 billion in a 10-year period, crop insurance 
for people who don't need it. And we're going to cut food stamps today 
$40 billion? That's not the values that America stands for. I will be 
voting against that legislation.

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