[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 27]
[Senate]
[Pages 36059-36060]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             FOOD PANTRIES

  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, on Monday, in Hocking County--a small-town, 
rural county in southeast Ohio--residents began forming a line at the 
Smith Chapel United Methodist Church Pantry before dawn. By 8:30, when 
volunteers began distributing food, the line of cars stretched for more 
than a mile and a half. By early afternoon, more than 2,000 residents 
had received food. That is over 7 percent of the local population. Mr. 
President, 1 out of 14 people in this county had received food from 
this food pantry. Eight years ago, the same pantry was serving 17 
families a month. Two thousand people in one day; 17 families for the 
whole month 8 years ago.
  The Freestore Foodbank in Cincinnati, OH, has seen a 52-percent 
increase in demand this year. Many of these new patrons are working 
people. They are working minimum-wage jobs. Some hold two jobs. They 
are not just the homeless. They are not just the dispossessed. They are 
all kinds of people who have had a series of bad luck in the last 
several months.
  With food prices going up, fuel prices going up, wages stagnating, 
and subprime foreclosures continuing to hit home, working middle-class 
Americans are finding it difficult to find room in their budgets for 
food.
  More Americans in need; less food available--the result is far too 
much human suffering. Think of this. In the wealthiest Nation in the 
world, people are waiting in line for a subsistence level of food, and 
some of them are not even receiving that. The men and women and 
children waiting in line for food are men and women and children you 
have passed on the street--mothers and fathers trying to feed their 
kids, children too proud to admit there is no lunch money in their 
pocket, no food in the refrigerator, no holiday meals ahead; no food.
  Grandmothers raising their grandchildren, living on fixed incomes, 
relying--because they have no choice but to rely--on food pantries, on 
food donations, on food banks.
  The unemployed, the sick, the aged, the homeless, the mentally ill. 
And in Hocking County, 1 out of 14 people went to one food bank on 1 
day. There are people who live in the communities that all of us serve. 
Food banks in Ohio, in Montana, Michigan, Illinois, Arizona, New York, 
New Mexico, North Dakota, and Rhode Island and in every State of the 
Union are underfunded and overextended. Food banks too often are 
rationing rations, trying to prevent children and families from going 
hungry over the holidays. In Lorain, OH, my hometown, the Salvation 
Army Food Pantry ran out of food completely and was forced to close 
temporarily. The society of St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry in 
Cincinnati has been forced to give families 3 or 4 days of food instead 
of the customary 6 or 7 days of food when people come to see them. In 
Athens County, OH, earlier this month, the director of the Family and 
Friends Choice Pantry was actually ``praising God we are in a snowstorm 
and not many people showed up'' because if they had, her pantry would 
have run out of food. In Ohio as a whole, 70 percent of food pantries 
don't have enough food to serve everyone in need.
  That is why earlier last week I offered legislation to act to 
alleviate the current food shortage. That is why I want to see us 
include $40 million in emergency food aid for food pantries across my 
State and across the country. I appreciate the leadership of Senator 
Durbin and Majority Leader Reid in wanting to include this at the next 
opportunity come January to get this $40 million out to the States, out 
to churches and food banks and food pantries so that the 1 out of 14 
people in Hocking County and people in need all over this country can 
get the assistance we can afford to give them.

[[Page 36060]]


  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Ohio yield for a 
question?
  Mr. BROWN. I yield to the senior Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I would like to ask through the Chair--I 
want to first thank the Senator from Ohio for his leadership on this 
issue. He is new to the Senate but not new to this issue.
  Times have changed in America, and not for the better when it comes 
to food pantries. People need help. I just this Sunday visited the 
Greater Chicago Food Depository and learned that there is an 11-percent 
increase over last year in the number of people coming into food 
pantries served in the greater Chicagoland area, and most of them have 
jobs. These are people who, when they fill up the gas tank and need 
another $20 to fill the tank, realize they are not going to have enough 
money to buy food for their children that they planned on buying, and 
they make a stop at the food pantry.
  I would like to ask the Senator from Ohio whether he is familiar with 
Second Harvest, which is a major national organization that involves 
itself in the processing of contributions from private industry and 
from the Federal Government into food pantries, and whether he has any 
experience in dealing with the Second Harvest food pantries in his area 
or other food pantries.
  The last point I would like to make is that we were told on Sunday 
that people who care, particularly during this holiday season, should 
go to secondharvest.org, but find their local pantry, find where they 
can drop off food, volunteer for an hour, make a donation, do something 
that will make you feel good about yourself this holiday season.
  But I would like to ask the Senator from Ohio whether he has been 
contacted by these agencies dealing with Second Harvest.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Illinois 
for his work on food issues and on other issues, including everything 
from subprime to minimum wage and all issues where we can play a role 
in improving the lives of people who, as the Senator from Illinois 
said, are working, in most cases, full-time jobs.
  Second Harvest is one of the great organizations in this country--in 
Illinois, in Ohio, in Nevada, and in Vermont, all over this country. I 
urge people, understanding that Second Harvest is not getting the 
donations they used to get, they are not getting enough help from the 
Government, they are not getting as much from supermarkets and from 
businesses as they got before, and they, frankly, are not getting as 
many charitable donations because people who gave before sometimes are 
in need themselves because it is often people who don't make a lot of 
money who are the most generous with their money and with their 
assistance, to plea to people in our States, businesses, individuals 
who are as lucky as we are in this Chamber, to help Second Harvest, to 
go on Web sites and look in the yellow pages and look around their 
communities where they can help people so that this will actually make 
a difference. So I thank the Senator from Illinois for his interest.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I mentioned to my friend from Ohio a fact 
that I just heard. I hope it is wrong, but if it is wrong, it is not 
much wrong. The average income of people who vote in America today is 
$70,000 a year. I am very happy we have people who have a little--
people of means who are voting, but the reason I mention that is the 
last two issues that have been brought before the Senate, one dealing 
with LIHEAP--that is, how people stay warm in the wintertime; that was 
by the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Sanders--and now the Senator from Ohio 
is talking about food banks. In Nevada, 25 percent of the homeless are 
veterans, and we have a very difficult problem, especially in Las 
Vegas. The weather is warm most of the time. We have people who are 
homeless there who are destitute. Food banks is the difference between 
being very hungry and having something to eat.
  I, at one time, in disguise, spent 2 days with the homeless. It was a 
number of years ago that I did that, but it is something I will never 
forget. People are not there because they want to be. They are not 
there because they are lazy. There are some who are alcoholics, and 
there are some who have drug problems, there is no question about that. 
But there are so many of these people who have emotional problems who 
have no community health centers where they can go, so they are just 
down and out.
  All the Senator from Ohio is saying is that food banks, the places 
where the poorest of the poor go to get a meal, don't have food. I want 
the attention to be directed to the last two things we have tried to 
work on: keeping people warm in the wintertime and helping people so 
they are not starving. So I appreciate this.
  The people who are cold in the wintertime don't have people to come 
and lobby for them. People who are homeless don't have people here 
lobbying for them, coming in their limousines and parking over on 
Constitution Avenue, and sometimes they are in their Gucci shoes and 
they have to walk all the way across half a block to come and lobby for 
some of the tax breaks they want. For people who are hungry and people 
who are cold, that isn't the case. So I appreciate very much the 
Senator from Ohio bringing to the attention of the Senate something 
that needs to be done.

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