[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 16364]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESERVE THE FOOD STAMP PROGRAM

  (Mr. KILDEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, this week, unfortunately, food stamps will 
be cut by $5 billion. We expected that. What is worse is that even 
deeper cuts could follow.
  Conferees start negotiating a farm bill this week, and billions of 
dollars in cuts--in fact, $40 billion--have been proposed by 
Republicans in the House, which is 10 times the number of cuts passed 
in the bipartisan bill in the Senate.
  Since I have been here in Congress, I have talked to dozens of people 
in my district who have come up to me and said, Thank you for fighting 
to preserve the food stamp program. I have never told anybody, they 
say, but I received food stamps at one point in my life, so thank you 
for fighting.
  I am afraid that many Members of Congress simply don't know what it 
is like to be poor in America. These are real people--real human 
beings. The cuts that we contemplate here are not numbers on a piece of 
paper but are cuts that would literally take food out of the mouths of 
people who are hungry.
  This is wrong. It cannot stand. I urge my colleagues to fight to 
preserve this important program.

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