[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Pages 24378-24379]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NATIONAL HUNGER AND POVERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) 
is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to 
address the Department of Agriculture's report that was released last 
week on national hunger data. My home State of Texas ranks at the 
bottom of this list with 16 percent of households listed as food 
insecure. This means that at some point, 16 percent of Texans could not 
provide enough food for their families. This is a staggering number.

[[Page 24379]]

  Nationally, we did not do much better. Despite improvements in the 
economy, the number of households at risk for hunger actually 
increased. We have heard about the mergers, consolidations, buyouts and 
all the layoffs. As a matter of fact, higher productivity where you can 
get half the number of people to do the same job the rest of them did 
is having its impact.
  Hiring illegal aliens for less than minimum wage or minimum wage is 
having its impact. Those people are looking for a better day for their 
families. They send the money back to Mexico and that leaves them here 
without anything to eat. We must address this issue. This means that 
even though more people are working, many are not making enough money 
to afford basic necessities, namely, food. A full-time minimum wage 
worker makes less than $11,000 per year. Can you just imagine some of 
these CEOs making less than $20 million? They would probably starve. 
These are not just teenagers flipping hamburgers. Thirty-five percent 
of those earning minimum wage are their family's sole breadwinner. 
These working poor are faced with the impossible decision of often 
having to choose between food, clothing, shelter, medicine and utility 
bills, gas bills.
  America was founded on the idea that everyone who works hard can 
obtain the American dream. Over the past 5 years, this Congress has 
abandoned those ideals and intensified poverty. We can do better to 
help American families. It is unconscionable that every day we are 
here, we are working to see how we can give a bigger tax cut for the 
wealthy and how we can take it away from the poor. It does not just 
affect the poor, it affects all of us. Until we are fair about 
distribution of some wealth, we will never have fairness returned. We 
have got to invest to solve these problems. That does not mean throwing 
money at the problem but it does mean paying people a living wage to 
live on. When we hear about Southwestern Bell, AT&T, TXU laying off 
1,200, 1,400, 1,500 people, it impacts those families. Children have to 
drop out of college or out of school. Families' houses go up in 
foreclosure. These are law-abiding, working Americans. Do we care? Our 
record does not show that we care. We simply must address this issue.
  I hear all the statistics about the jobs created. Maybe it is like in 
New Orleans where every job created is going to an illegal alien. That 
simply is not fair to the American people and most especially it is not 
fair to people who were in New Orleans who called it home not being 
able to get the jobs. We have inherited more than our share of both and 
we have opened arms to receive them in Texas, but we do need to give 
attention to whether or not we are really helping. If they cannot eat, 
if they cannot afford shelter, are we helping?
  It is the same thing with our borders. Do we help the people to allow 
them to come over illegally, get hired by the wealthy for 3 or 4 weeks 
and then they are without jobs? I think we need to take a second look 
of how we are distributing wealth in this country. Just because the 
stock market is doing well for 10 percent of the population, it does 
not mean that everybody else is doing fine. I have heard so many 
comments about how great the economy is. These people are not even 
counted in the economy. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to 
share this with my colleagues, and I hope we heed this.

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