[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 16498-16499]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  REMEMBERING SENATOR GEORGE McGOVERN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, a week ago Monday, October 21, was the 1-
year anniversary of the death of my friend, Senator George McGovern of 
South Dakota.
  We shared the same last name, but we weren't related. I interned for 
him when I was in college and he was in the United States Senate. I 
embraced his liberalism. I admired his service to our country in World 
War II, where he served as a bomber pilot, and I respected very much 
his politics, the way he did politics, understanding the importance of 
reaching across the aisle, of working to build coalitions to solve big 
problems. In particular, I admired the work that he did to end hunger, 
working with people like Senator Bob Dole, a Republican from Kansas. He 
even worked with President Richard Nixon, who defeated him in the 1972 
election, winning 49 States over Senator McGovern.
  President Nixon held the first and only White House conference on 
food and nutrition. That conference helped spur a whole bunch of 
legislative activity aimed at improving nutrition for everybody in this 
country and aimed at ending hunger, which was a problem. George 
McGovern and Bob Dole, and even Richard Nixon, believed that in the 
richest country in the history of the world nobody ought to go hunger. 
I think of Senator McGovern often, especially now when I see what is 
happening in this Congress.
  On Friday, November 1, a couple of days from now, the moneys that 
were put into the SNAP program, formerly known as food stamps, to help 
provide additional resources for people to buy food in this country, 
those reinvestment moneys will come to an end. There will be a $5 
billion cut in the SNAP program on Friday. Every single beneficiary 
will see a reduction in their food benefit. That includes 22 million 
kids, 9 million elderly people and disabled, and it includes 900,000 
veterans.
  We say we want to support our veterans, but many of them have come 
back and found it difficult to find a job or found it difficult to find 
a job that pays a living wage, and they rely on the SNAP program so 
they can put food on the table for their families. Yet, on Friday, 
900,000 veterans who are on the SNAP program will see a reduction in 
their benefit. A family of three will see a reduction of about $30 per 
month in their benefit. That is about 16 meals a month for a family of 
three.
  That is an awful thing that is about to happen, but what is more 
awful is what is coming down the road. This House of Representatives 
passed a farm bill that includes, on top of this $5 billion cut, an 
additional $40 billion in cuts in the SNAP program. That would mean 3.8 
million people currently receiving the benefit will be thrown off the 
program.
  Hundreds of thousands of children who rely on the free breakfast and 
lunch program will lose that benefit. I have been to many schools where 
I have seen kids staring off into space because they haven't had 
anything to eat. You can't learn if you are hungry.
  That $40 billion cut that this House of Representatives voted for 
would throw 170,000 veterans off the program entirely.
  Today, we are going to have the first meeting of the conference 
committee on the farm bill. I am privileged enough to be one of the 
conferees. I am going to tell my colleagues that I want very much for 
there to be a farm bill. I represent a lot of agriculture in 
Massachusetts. My farmers want a farm bill. Farmers all across the 
country want a farm bill. We need a farm bill for this country. I am 
willing to be flexible and I am willing to compromise and I am willing 
to accept things that maybe I don't like entirely because that is the 
way you compromise.
  What I am not willing to do, and what every Member of this House

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should not be willing to do, is to support a farm bill that makes 
hunger worse in this country. As we speak, there are 50 million 
Americans who are hungry--50 million; 17 million are kids. We all 
should be ashamed.
  Who is to blame for this? We all share the blame because hunger is a 
political condition. We can solve this. We know what to do. We just 
don't have the political will. We kind of turn a blind eye to the 
problem of hunger in America.
  It is a problem, by the way, that not only costs dearly in terms of 
human suffering, but it costs us all in terms of kids who can't learn 
in school and avoidable health care costs.
  We need a farm bill, Mr. Speaker, but let the price of that farm bill 
not be to increase hunger in America. Let's remember George McGovern, 
let's remember Bob Dole, let's remember people who understood the 
importance of combating hunger in America.

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