[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 170 (Tuesday, December 3, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H7399-H7400]
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 want to welcome all of my colleagues 
back from their Thanksgiving holiday, and I trust that, like me, 
everybody had a great Thanksgiving along with a wonderful meal. But I'm 
here today to remind my colleagues, so that they don't forget, that for 
millions of our fellow citizens, they were without a Thanksgiving 
dinner. In fact, for millions of our fellow citizens, they go without 
meals on a regular basis. Men, women, and children, close to 50 million 
Americans, go hungry in our country, the richest country in the history 
of the world. It is a national scandal, and it is something that we 
need to do something about.
  Mr. Speaker, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise 
known as SNAP, helps struggling families put food on the table. It's a 
good program that, sadly, has come under attack by some--not all--but 
by some of my Republican friends, and for the life of me, I can't 
understand why.
  The average SNAP benefit is about $1.40 per meal. The No Kid Hungry 
campaign, launched by the group Share Our Strength, recently did a 
chart which shows that the average cost of one Thanksgiving dinner is 
about $49.04. That's equal to about 35 SNAP meals.
  The fact is that our food banks are at capacity. I went to a 
Thanksgiving dinner sponsored by my bishop that was filled with people 
looking for food. That same group run by the Catholic Charities 
delivered well over 1,000 meals to people in my community on that one 
Thanksgiving Day. But the notion that somehow charity can do it all, or 
that food banks can do it all, or that churches or synagogues or 
mosques can do it all, is just wrong.
  I would urge my colleagues to visit a food bank, to visit a food 
pantry, talk to the people who run those organizations and let them 
inform you of who is showing up at their doorsteps. Talk to the people 
who go to these food banks. These are average people. Many of them are 
working families who earn so little that they still qualify for the 
SNAP benefit.
  The White House released a report over the Thanksgiving holiday 
talking about the importance of the nutrition assistance program. The 
report highlights, among other things, that in 2012 SNAP kept nearly 5 
million people out of poverty, including 2.2 million children. SNAP 
reduced child poverty by 3 percentage points in 2012, the largest child 
poverty impact of any safety net program other than refundable tax 
credits.
  The program's benefits are targeted to those most in need and 
designed to support work. The large majority of SNAP participants are 
children, the elderly, or people with disabilities, and

[[Page H7400]]

about 95 percent of Federal spending on SNAP goes directly to 
subsidizing the food purchases of eligible households. It is one of the 
most efficiently run Federal programs. I wish the Department of Defense 
was run as efficiently as this. Our deficit would be much lower. Among 
SNAP households with at least one working age non-disabled adult, more 
than half work--more than half work--and more than 80 percent worked in 
the year before or after receiving SNAP.
  Now, the legislation that the House Republican leadership rammed 
through this Congress and is now part of a negotiation on the farm bill 
would cut the program by close to $40 billion. That would result in 
nearly 4 million Americans losing access to SNAP next year, including 
working families with children, seniors, and veterans. Nearly 170,000 
veterans would lose their benefits. In addition, 210,000 children and 
these families would also lose free school meals. These cuts would come 
on top of the significant benefit reduction already experienced by all 
SNAP recipients as a result of the American Recovery Act moneys running 
out.
  I would say to my colleagues that what that cut that went into effect 
on November 1 means is that the average family of four would see a 
reduction of about $36 per month in their SNAP benefit. We're talking 
about food. We're talking about making sure in the richest country in 
the history of the world that nobody goes hungry.
  I know that these are tough budgetary times, but if you want to find 
ways to save money, I would suggest we listen to my colleague, Mr. 
Jones of North Carolina, and get the hell out of Afghanistan. Stop 
supporting one of the most corrupt regimes on this planet today, the 
Karzai regime. Take those millions and those billions and reinvest it 
here at home. Reinvest it in a way that we end hunger now.
  Mr. Speaker, for millions of our citizens who are hungry, what they 
worry about and what they fear is not halfway around the world. It is 
halfway down the block. We ought to make sure we get a farm bill that 
does not make hunger worse in this country, and if we have a farm bill 
that cuts SNAP significantly, I would urge all my colleagues to not 
only vote against it but fight against it. We can do better. Let's get 
a farm bill, but let's not make hunger worse.

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