Food Stamp Challenge

Floor Speech

FOOD STAMP CHALLENGE -- (House of Representatives - May 21, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 4, 2007, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) is recognized during morning-hour debate for 5 minutes.

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, today is my final day on the Food Stamp Challenge, an initiative where public officials eat for 1 week on a food stamp budget, $21 for the week. That is $3 a day, or $1 per meal. This amount reflects the national average of the food stamp benefit.

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the Food Stamp Challenge is to raise awareness of the crucial role the food stamp program serves in the lives of 26 million Americans each month, including over 450,000 in my State of Massachusetts.

Three of my esteemed colleagues, Representatives Jo Ann Emerson, Jan Schakowsky and Tim Ryan, joined me in taking the challenge over the past week. And although we may be less energetic and perhaps crankier than when we started the challenge nearly a week ago, each of us has learned a great deal.

Certainly my wife, Lisa, and I have gained valuable insights from our experience on a very tight budget. We have much more sympathy over how the lack of energy and the hard choices of how to stretch the budget and put food on the table might also stretch one's patience and stress a marriage. We can imagine the worry and pain of parents if we had to feed our children on this kind of budget.

These are just a few of our reflections over the past week. Yet truly our most valuable lesson came from the scores of individuals who reached out to us to share their personal experiences struggling to put food on the table for their families. Whether they posted comments on our blog or called my office and spoke with my staff, these individuals taught Lisa and me about how hardworking Americans manage to provide for themselves and their families in spite of inadequate food stamp benefit levels.

They talked about having to make tough trade-offs between paying utility bills, buying clothes for their children, addressing medical needs and purchasing food. They also described the trade-off between eating to be healthy or eating to be full. These kinds of trade-offs are unfair and unacceptable.

Mr. Speaker, America can and should do more for low-income individuals and families working hard to survive each and every day. One way we can do that is through the Feeding America's Families Act, a bill that I introduced earlier this month with my colleague, Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson.

The Feeding America's Families Act would strengthen the food stamp program to better meet the needs of low-income Americans. It raises the minimum benefit from $10 a month--an amount that has not increased since the 1970s--to about $30 a month. It also indexes current benefit levels to the rate of inflation, ensuring that the purchasing power of food stamps remains constant.

Furthermore, because access to the food stamp program should be the right of every lawfully residing person in this country, the bill restores eligibility to all legal immigrants, a provision that was removed in 1996.

On Sunday, May 13, Mother's Day, the New York Times editorial stated that ``bolstering food stamps must be Congress's top priority in this year's farm bill.'' Well, I could not agree more. My week on the Food Stamp Challenge has not only strengthened my conviction, I encourage all of my colleagues to cosponsor H.R. 2129, Feeding America's Families Act, and other legislative efforts to bolster and improve our Federal hunger and nutrition programs.

The cliche tells us that where there's a will there's a way. But in this case, there is a very clear way. The question is, do we have the political will? I believe we do.

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