Unanimous Consent Request

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Senator Stabenow, it is a pleasure to be here with you in this fight for something as fundamental as hunger. As I was listening to the conversation, your words and our colleague's from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, who was speaking, and our colleague from Minnesota and partner from Oregon, I thought: How many Senators have experienced hunger this last week, the inability to have a meal? What is your sense of that?

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Mr. MERKLEY. No one in this Chamber is missing a meal.

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Mr. MERKLEY. I am pretty sure, down the hall in the House of Representatives, nobody is missing a meal; yet so many people in each of our States are missing meals. In my State of Oregon, hunger has doubled since March. I imagine hunger has increased in your home State of Michigan.

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Mr. MERKLEY. It is being driven by massive unemployment. The estimate in April was for families who earn less than $40,000 a year, 40 percent had lost their job. I think that was April. Now, maybe it is well over 50 percent. Half of working America of modest incomes lost their jobs, and it wasn't that easy to sign up for unemployment benefits.

We still have a couple hundred thousand people in Oregon who are waiting for unemployment benefits. I can guarantee you they are very hungry. I know there are those in Michigan as well.

The majority leader has decided to send the Senate on vacation for 2 weeks. I guess my question to you is: Does hunger take a vacation? Do those who are hungry in Oregon and hungry in Pennsylvania, is it going to take a vacation for 2 weeks?

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Mr. MERKLEY. We might think of hunger as kind of a temporary discomfort, something you get through, but my understanding is, when children are hungry, when they don't have the basic nutrients on a regular basis, it damages the development of the mind.

Is that something you heard?

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Mr. MERKLEY. We are talking about millions of American children who are suffering not just discomfort but damage to their minds because they don't have enough to eat. The majority leader is sending us on vacation rather than addressing it.

Thank you to my colleague for coming to the floor, organizing, carrying this forward, the work you do, and authorizing the work the Appropriations Committee does and the funding.

We have got to address this. We have to recognize how bad the situation is, how bad things are nationally. More than 40 million people have lost their jobs; 120,000 people have died. The rate of infections are exploding across the country--and how bad things are in my home State--243,000 people are out of work. We have an unemployment rate of over 14 percent, higher than it was any point in the great recession. Food insecurity and hunger have doubled since March. Food is at the top of the hierarchy of needs for human life.

All we have done is come to the floor and say: Let's help in a pretty modest way with a 15-percent increase--the $4 and change that the Senator talked about--60 cents? We probably should be doubling it.

But that 15-percent increase in the maximum benefits does make a difference. It makes a difference. Hunger doesn't take a vacation and neither should we.

As Senator Stabenow proposed, we should debate a bill now--pass now a bill. We should effect these changes at this moment and not leave this Chamber until we have gotten the work of the American people done for the most important need any human being has, and that is basic nutrition.

When Martin Luther King was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize, he said that he had ``the audacity to believe that people everywhere could have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.'' Let this Chamber have the audacity not just to believe that people can have three meals a day but to make it happen.

I am fully in support of your efforts, a full partner on behalf of all those who suffer hunger in the United States, on behalf of every child who wants a basic foundation to thrive here in the United States of America. We are failing in our job. Hunger doesn't take a vacation and neither should the Senate. Let's get the act passed now.

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