[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 17858-17859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            NATIONAL HOMELESSNESS AND HUNGER AWARENESS WEEK

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, next week, Americans across the country 
will gather with family and friends to celebrate a national tradition, 
Thanksgiving. Some will give thanks for their good fortune or health 
over the past year, while others will simply be thankful to see their 
loved ones together in one place. What most of us will take for 
granted, however, is that we will have a meal to eat and have a home in 
which to gather. Far too many Americans will not have that luxury. 
During this time of reflection, and in honor of National Homelessness 
and Hunger Awareness week, I would like to take a moment to speak about 
those who are all too often overlooked, the homeless and the hungry.
  Each and every day, millions of Americans face the uncertainty of 
when their next meal will be or when they will be able to feed their 
family. On any given night, a disgraceful number of Americans face the 
uncertainty of not knowing where they will sleep. Sadly, many have 
nowhere to turn. These Americans live in both large States and small, 
in urban centers, and small, rural towns across the country. These are 
men, women, and children who live, work, and attend schools in our 
communities without the basic needs of food security and a place to 
call home.
  There are nearly 3,000 Vermonters who do not have a roof over their 
head each night. And while organizations like the Committee on 
Temporary Shelter, COTS, Spectrum Youth and Family Services, and the 
Vermont Coalition for Runaway and Homeless Youth do their best to 
provide emergency shelter, services, and housing for people who are 
homeless or marginally housed, the need far outweighs their capacity.
  Nationally, we have made some progress to address this issue and have 
seen the number of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness and 
homeless veterans significantly decrease. Unfortunately, the face of 
homelessness is changing, and the number of families facing 
homelessness has dramatically increased. Shelters are seeing an 
unprecedented number of families. Many of these families have at least 
one adult who is working full time, but who does not earn enough to 
afford a place to live. Of the 4,244 people who used emergency shelters 
in Vermont last year, 952 of them were children. We know that children 
who experience homelessness suffer from high rates of anxiety, 
depression, behavioral problems, and below-average school performance. 
Regrettably, shelter workers are beginning to see the first signs of 
generational homelessness. This is unacceptable, and we owe it to those 
children and families to do more.
  Across the country nearly 1 in 6 people faces hunger on a daily 
basis; 1 in 5 children are living in a household with food insecurity. 
In a nation where $165 billion worth of food goes to waste each year, 
it is clear that there is enough food to feed everyone in America. We 
need to do a better job of getting that food to those who need it most. 
For the more than 84,000 Vermonters facing food insecurity, the 
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, known as 3Squares in 
Vermont, is a lifeline helping to feed their families. SNAP is our 
single most important anti-hunger program providing assistance to 
nearly 49 million Americans in need of help to afford food. With so 
many Americans still struggling to put food on the table, it is 
deplorable that some in Congress continue to call for reductions to 
food assistance as a way to solve our Nation's deficit problems.
  No one can deny the effects of hunger on Americans, especially 
children. Children who live in food insecure homes are at a greater 
risk of developmental delays, poor academic performance, nutrient 
deficiencies, obesity and depression. Yet participation in food 
assistance programs turns these statistics on their head. Federal 
nutrition programs have been shown to decrease the risk a child will 
develop health problems and is associated with decreases in the 
incidence of child abuse. Children from families who receive food 
stamps have a higher achievement in math and reading and have improved 
behavior, social interactions and diet quality than children who go 
without.
  Two-thirds of SNAP beneficiaries are children, the disabled, or the 
elderly who cannot be expected to work. The remaining participants in 
the program are subject to rigorous work requirements in order to 
receive continuing benefits. While SNAP offers crucial support to a 
family's grocery expenses, the benefits far from cover a family's food 
expenses. With a benefit average of about $1.25 per person, per meal, 
it is understandable that families typically fall short on benefits by 
the middle of the month.
  Across the Nation, wages have remained flat as prices for every day 
essentials like food, heat, and especially housing, continue to rise. 
At the same time, as more families find themselves in need of some 
help, the programs that provide that safety net have been devastated by 
cuts over the past several years and continue to be targeted for even 
further reductions in the name of protecting tax loopholes for 
corporate jets and oil companies.
  The budget decisions made in Congress have real impacts for real 
people. Reductions to funding for the organizations providing emergency 
shelter, or programs that build much needed affordable housing, means 
more Americans face housing insecurity. Cuts to the SNAP program means 
benefits will run out earlier in the month and even though donations to 
food banks and soup kitchens are down, they will see a record number of 
families looking for a little help to just make it to the next month.
  As the budget conferees discuss a path forward, it is essential that 
they find a common sense compromise to replace sequestration and put an 
end to the deficit reduction on the backs of those most in need. There 
are just too many people that are one unforeseen expense away from a 
desperate financial situation that could result in them losing the roof 
over their head, and the means to feed their family. We can all agree 
that there is something fundamentally wrong with the reality that 
children living in one of the wealthiest nations in the world do not 
know when they will get their next meal and do not have a safe place to 
sleep at night.
  Every child in America deserves a fair shot. This is why I have 
championed the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Programs authorized by 
the RHYA have successfully helped countless runaway and homeless youth 
and their families in Vermont and across the nation over the last 30 
years, but we can and must do more. We must recognize the importance of 
investing in our Nation's youth, and direct resources where they are 
needed most. Programs authorized by the RHYA expired at the end of 
September. I hope that we can work to reauthorize and improve RHYA by 
addressing the needs of children in the most vulnerable communities, 
and provide services that meet the needs of youth who identify as LGBT 
and the young victims of trafficking or exploitation. We need more 
training and resources to help our grantees meet the needs of young 
victims, and that is what the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act provides.
  There are families that are having difficulty making ends meet. We 
must pass a farm bill that does not include the extreme House cuts to 
SNAP benefits at levels 10 times as high as the bipartisan Senate bill 
and nearly twice as high as the House's original bill. Those cuts would 
mean that each year, an average of three million people will be kicked 
off food assistance, and hundreds of thousands of children will lose 
access to school means. I hope that the bipartisan efforts of the 
Senate to pass

[[Page 17859]]

a responsible farm bill will help produce a good farm bill out of 
conference that does not contain these deep and damaging cuts to food 
assistance.
  We owe it to the American people to put politics aside and especially 
during this time of year, to give a voice to those who are most in 
need, to those often overlooked and marginalized and to start making 
meaningful progress to eliminating homelessness and hunger in this 
country.

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