[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11864]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             END HUNGER NOW

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, being poor in America is hard work. 
Despite what some of my colleagues and many right-wing pundits might 
think, it simply isn't easy to be poor in America.
  Mr. Speaker, week after week, I come to this floor to talk about how 
we can end hunger now. It is a simple concept. We can end hunger if we 
muster the political will to do so. We have the food and we know how to 
do it. We just need the commitment to make it happen. Unfortunately, 
Congress has very consciously decided to make hunger worse.
  In November, this Congress let a massive, across-the-board cut to 
SNAP take effect. The result was a benefit cut of $30 per month for a 
family of three. Imagine living on a fixed income, relying on food 
stamps to put food on the table, and then seeing your monthly allotment 
cut, without the cost of food going down. It is hard to make those 
numbers work.
  On top of that across-the-board cut, this Congress passed a farm bill 
that cut an additional $8.5 billion from SNAP. Thankfully, a number of 
Governors have stepped up, covered those costs, and ensured that this 
cut would not impact poor people in their States. But not every State 
did the responsible thing, and poor people in those States will see an 
additional cut of $90 per month.
  Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, this is an assault on poor people.
  Part of the problem is that very few Members of Congress have even 
the faintest clue what it is like to be poor in America. How many 
Members of Congress have actually visited food banks, talked to SNAP 
recipients, or stayed overnight in a family shelter? How many of my 
colleagues have even looked at a WIC, LIHEAP, or Medicaid application, 
let alone tried to fill one out or gone through the approval process? 
The answer, Mr. Speaker, is very few.
  Too many of my colleagues either turn a blind eye to the poor or go 
out of their way to dismiss their struggles. Many of these Members who 
don't take time to learn about the struggles of the poor are actually 
dispensing misleading information and are advocating for cuts to 
programs they mistakenly refer to as bloated and fraught with fraud, 
waste, and abuse.
  Take SNAP, for example. Yes, it is a large program. We spend a lot of 
money ensuring that poor people have access to food. But until we do 
something about wages--and the first thing we should do is to raise the 
minimum wage, Mr. Speaker, so that people can actually afford to live 
their lives--we will be forced to either let people go hungry or help 
them buy their food. SNAP is that lifeline that helps put food on 
kitchen tables.
  By the way, a majority of people who rely on SNAP actually work for a 
living.
  Opponents of SNAP continue to describe it as fraught with fraud, 
waste, and abuse. This is absolutely false, period. The Center on 
Budget and Policy Priorities recently released a report explaining that 
the rates of both over- and underpayments have fallen considerably in 
recent years. In fact, the center found that less than 1 percent of 
food stamps go to ineligible people.
  It is time we hear from people who are struggling to make ends meet. 
I was pleased that my friend, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, the ranking 
member of the Budget Committee, invited Tianna Gaines-Turner to testify 
before the Budget Committee last week, at the request of Congresswoman 
Barbara Lee of California.
  Chairman Paul Ryan has held five hearings on the 50th anniversary of 
the war on poverty, and this is the first time a poor person actually 
testified before the committee. It is amazing that it took so long to 
hear from a person who is actually trying to dig herself and her family 
out of poverty. That is the good news. If you want to hear the bad 
news, you should watch some of the questioning she endured at the hands 
of some of my Republican colleagues.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to hear more from people like Ms. Gaines-Turner, 
and we need to work even harder to end hunger in America.
  I will close by saying to my colleagues that the poor in America are 
more than statistics; they are real people. It is long past time this 
Congress made their plight a priority.

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