[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16648]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                POVERTY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Lee) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. LEE of California. I rise again today, as I've been doing every 
week, to sound the alarm on poverty in America. Twelve Members of 
Congress are or will be participating in the food stamp challenge, 
which is a nationwide effort to bring attention to the needs of the 45 
million Americans who are receiving food benefits under the 
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps. For 1 week, 
we lived on the food budget of the average food stamp recipient, or 
$31.50 a week, $4.50 a day, which means I spent on average $1.50 a 
meal. This is for 1 week.
  Let me thank Congressmen Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Tim Ryan, Joe 
Courtney, Jan Schakowsky, Donna Christensen, Alcee Hastings, Keith 
Ellison, Jim Moran, Jackie Speier, Ted Deutch, Marcia Fudge, and 
Eleanor Holmes Norton for their participation and their commitment to 
drawing attention to the struggle of millions of hardworking families 
to put food on the table during very difficult economic times.
  We faced limited food choices, lacked access to fresh and healthy 
foods, and were repeatedly exposed to unhealthy and inadequate food 
choices that promote poor health, obesity, and hypertension. But of 
course, our week will end.
  I hope that every Member of Congress will stop for at least a moment 
and consider the millions of American families who will face these 
challenges each and every day until they can find a good job with a 
real living wage.
  Now, I'm a former food stamp recipient, and let me tell you that I 
was deeply thankful for my fellow Americans who were there for me and 
my children during a difficult time in our lives. The benefits that 
were extended to us were a critical help and provided a vital bridge 
over troubled waters when we needed them the most. But we didn't want 
to stay on food stamps forever, and we got off as soon as we could.
  Let me also say that now is not the time to gut these critical human 
needs programs. We are facing record poverty levels and unacceptably 
high unemployment rates, and it is simply unconscionable to attempt to 
balance the budgets on the backs of the most vulnerable and the 
neediest Americans.
  We must create what is being called a circle of protection around 
these core programs that keep American families from suffering the 
worst impacts of living in poverty.
  But we must do more than just minimize the cuts to programs. We must 
make bold, targeted investments that will lift those families up and 
off of food stamps. We must improve and extend programs that create 
jobs and provide ladders of opportunity for all. We must commit 
ourselves to removing barriers, and they're many, to opportunity like 
poverty and hunger so that we can reignite the American Dream.
  Mr. Speaker, on January 22, 2008, the House unanimously passed a 
resolution that I authored which committed Congress to the goal of 
cutting poverty in America in half in a decade. Now it's time to put 
that commitment to the test.

                              {time}  1030

  An estimated 46 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010; and 
according to the latest Census figures, the official poverty rate in 
2010 is now 15.1 percent.
  It is simply unconscionable that the richest and most powerful Nation 
in the world can allow so many of its fellow Americans to fall to the 
wayside and be left with little hope and few opportunities to reach the 
American Dream. It's clear that our policies and programs addressing 
poverty have not kept pace with the growing needs of millions of 
Americans. It's time we make the commitment to confront poverty head 
on, create pathways out of poverty, and provide opportunities for all.
  I've introduced H.R. 3300, the Half in Ten Act of 2011. This bill 
would establish a Federal interagency working group on reducing 
poverty. The working group will be tasked with developing and 
implementing a national plan to reduce poverty in half in 10 years. We 
really should be talking about eliminating poverty.
  It would also work to eliminate child poverty, extreme poverty and 
finally put an end to the historic and ongoing disparity in poverty 
rates in communities of color. It's simply unacceptable that 
communities of color continue to face disturbingly high rates of 
poverty, with 27.4 percent of African Americans and 26.5 percent of 
Hispanics living in poverty, compared to their white counterparts, who 
have a poverty rate of just under 10 percent.
  It's time to work together to dramatically improve access to 
opportunities for low-income Americans so that they can climb up the 
economic ladder and reignite the fire of the American Dream.
  We must put partisanship aside to preserve and extend the vital human 
needs programs that protect our most vulnerable communities. We cannot 
and we must not seek to balance the budget on the backs of America's 
poor, her children and an entire generation of young people, who are 
really now taking to the streets to protest the fact that they are 
afraid that theirs will be the first generation in America's history to 
be less well off than the one before.

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