[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13474-13475]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          FOOD STAMP CHALLENGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2007, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is 
recognized during morning-hour debate for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  Last week I accepted the Food Stamp Challenge, living for the past 
week on the average food stamp benefit of $1 per meal or $21 for the 
entire week.
  I did it in order to draw attention to the persistent problem of 
hunger in America. I didn't realize just how hard it would be, but on 
my first shopping trip to Safeway, I quickly found out. It was hard 
enough to buy basic staples, but once I got to the produce section, it 
was impossible to buy much of anything. There was no way to eat a 
nutritious diet. Fruits and vegetables were simply out of my price 
range.
  For me, it was a learning experience. For 26 million Americans and 
1.2 million Illinoisans, it is a way of life. I wonder how parents on 
food stamps can stretch their budgets so their children have enough to 
eat or how seniors with chronic illness afford both eating nutritious 
meals and purchasing adequate medication. The answer for many is they 
simply can't.
  In the richest country in the world, the fact that families face 
these sort of trade-offs is unjust and I would say it's immoral. The 
United States is spending merely $3 billion each week in Iraq, yet we 
expect hungry Americans to eat on $3 a day?
  We need to pass Representatives Jim McGovern's and Jo Ann Emerson's 
Feeding America's Families Act, which would strengthen America's anti-
hunger safety net programs, including food stamps, at a reasonable and 
affordable cost of about $4 billion per year. These

[[Page 13475]]

are the kinds of provisions that ought to be part of the farm bill 
which includes the food stamp program.
  I just ended this challenge yesterday. I am looking forward to a big 
salad for lunch where I include all kinds of vegetables at the salad 
bar that's in the cafeteria, adding whatever I want to that salad 
rather than having to carefully pick and choose what I had last week, 
which was one head of lettuce and one tomato and a few carrots, and 
that was about it. My snacks were water and, on a good moment, ice 
water.
  It was an interesting and instructive week for me, but imagining my 
children and grandchildren having to live that way made it very, very 
clear to me that this really ought not to be a forced option for so 
many millions of Americans.
  We can do better. This is a matter of priorities. We can change those 
priorities. We can make sure that with pride we say that no one in this 
country goes hungry, that everyone in this country at least has the 
opportunity to make healthy choices about the food that they eat and 
the food that they serve their children.
  How can a child learn in school when they come without an adequate 
breakfast? How can they achieve in life without the nutrition that they 
need as their bones are growing and as their minds are growing? I am 
very hopeful that the experiment that I did with Congressmen McGovern 
and Emerson and Tim Ryan will prove to be helpful in making sure that 
we are able to pass more humane, and important to all Americans, 
legislation that will provide nutritious and affordable food for all of 
our residents in the United States.

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