SNAP Cuts in the Farm Bill
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. First, let me say thank you to my colleagues who are leaving the floor for your great work on the issue of wage stagnation and the inability for upward mobility for people in this Nation. You have done a great service here tonight with laying out what the facts are. What we need to do is to be able to increase people's income and, therefore, give them the economic wherewithal to take care of themselves and their families and have a road to economic security. So I thank you very, very much.
I also want to say a thank you to my colleague from Rhode Island, Congressman Cicilline, who will join me in this 30-minute Special Order for tonight.
Tonight, I want to talk about the severe and immoral cuts being made to anti-hunger and nutrition programs, and particularly the continuation of devastating food stamp cuts being made in the proposed conference farm bill. We have said here that food stamps--food stamps--are an economic safety net.
As written, the farm bill would force 850,000 households--1.7 million men, women, children and veterans across America--to go hungry, even while wealthy agri-businesses continue to get generous crop subsidies. Low-income seniors, working poor families with children, and individuals with disabilities would be particularly impacted by the cruel cuts in this bill.
Meanwhile, the conference has decided to reopen the loopholes that the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan way, closed; and those loopholes as they reopen them will make sure that millionaires and billionaires are getting crop subsidies. One has to ask the question, Who are we working for here? In effect, this is reverse Robin Hood legislation. It steals food from the poor to help pay crop subsidies to the rich. And when I see Members supporting the immoral cuts in this legislation, Mr. Speaker, I have to wonder if some people in this institution have really lost their perspective and understand why we are here and what our moral responsibility is.
Across this country--this great country--nearly 50 million Americans, including over 16 million children, are struggling with hunger right now. Think for a moment about what that means. In 1974, a writer at Time magazine explained it this way:
The victim of starvation burns up his own body fats, muscles and tissues for fuel. His body quite literally consumes itself and deteriorates rapidly. The kidneys, liver and endocrine system often cease to function properly. A shortage of carbohydrates, which play a vital role in brain chemistry, affects the mind. Lassitude and confusion set in, so that starvation victims often seem unaware of their plight.
That is what we are talking about here. Hunger is agonizing. It is a curse. We are talking about men and women experiencing real physical torment, children who cannot concentrate in school because all they can think about is food. Seniors are forced to decide, in this virulent winter season, this polar vortex that we talked about, whether or not they will go hungry or whether or not they will go cold.
This is a problem all across this land. The estimates of Americans at risk of going hungry, here in the land of plenty, are appalling. In my Connecticut district, nearly one in seven households is not sure if they can afford enough food to feed their families. In Mississippi, 24.5 percent suffer food hardship. That is nearly one in four people. In West Virginia and Kentucky, 22 percent, one in five people, suffer food hardship; in Ohio, nearly 20 percent; and in California, just over 19 percent.
The continued existence of hunger in America is a disgrace and, quite frankly, an indictment of this institution. As the late Senator George McGovern, a champion against hunger, wrote:
The Earth has enough knowledge and resources to eradicate this ancient scourge. Hunger has plagued the world for thousands of years. But ending it is a great moral imperative now more than ever before, because for the first time humanity has the instruments at hand to defeat this cruel enemy at a very reasonable cost. We have the ability to provide food for all within the next three decades.
Or as President John F. Kennedy put it:
We have the ability, we have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the Earth. We need only the will.
Mr. Speaker, that will seems to be lacking in the Congress right now. Instead of working to end hunger for good, this farm bill takes food from the plates of 1.7 million Americans. And again, we are talking about seniors, veterans, children, families who are playing by the rules and many of whom are working full-time, all the time.
The farm bill, this one that is being proposed, would force Americans to go hungry. And at the same time, the conference has chosen, against the will of the House and the Senate, to reopen loopholes and strip out payment limits so that millionaires and wealthy agribusinesses can continue to get handouts.
It is unconscionable what has happened here. On its own cognizance, and in violation of the congressional rule that provisions passed by both bodies should not be changed, the conference more than doubled the annual dollars on primary payments. They said you now get $50,000 for a primary payment for your commodities, we are now going to raise that to $125,000. That loophole was closed. They then reopened the loophole closed in the House and the Senate that allows large wealthy farmers to collect far, far more than that nominal payment limit. And they did this while they cut $8.5 billion from food stamps.
What is interesting, what is very interesting and cruel, if you will, is that those folks who are upper-income scale, the wealthiest of farmers, they don't have to have any income threshold or test to see how much they make before they qualify for these payments. They don't have to tell us about what assets they have before they qualify for these payments. We don't have a cap on the payments that we give them. These are millionaires. And yes, for food stamp recipients, we have an asset threshold, an income threshold. We say, if you make so much money, you are not eligible for $1.40 per meal. You are not eligible. But if you are a millionaire, all bets are off. All bets are off. And you know those folks at the top rung, they are eating well. They are getting three squares a day. They are feeding their kids. And what we are going to do is to take food away from food stamp recipients--men, women, seniors, children, and veterans.
Where are the values of this great Nation? We have lost our way. We have lost our way.
In the past, there has been a strong tradition of bipartisanship on fighting hunger and supporting nutrition, from the left, leaders like George McGovern, and from the right, leaders like Bob Dole who would come together to make a difference for families in need. In fact, Senator Dole called the egregious cuts to food stamps in the House version of the bill ``an about-face on our progress fighting hunger.'' This is because food stamps is our country's most important effort to deal with hunger here at home and to ensure that American families can put food on the table for their kids. They help over 47 million Americans, nearly half of them children, meet their basic food needs, and they make a tremendous difference for the health and well-being of families. Food stamps have been proven to improve low-income children's health and development, reduce food insecurity, and have a continuing positive influence into adulthood.
Children's Health Watch researchers found, after collecting 14 years' worth of data on over 20,000 low-income families, that when families experience a loss or reduction in food stamp benefits, they are more likely to be food insecure, be in poor health, and their children experience intensified developmental delays relative to their peers.
Food stamps also have one of the lowest error rates of any government program. It is around 3.8 percent. That includes overpayments and underpayments. I defy to go to any other agency--let's look at the crop insurance program and find out what their error rate is all about.
Food stamps are good for the economy, a positive impact on growth, because food stamps not only help to feed the hungry, they get resources into the hands of families who will spend them right away. The U.S. Department of Agriculture research shows that every $5 of Federal food stamp benefits generates nearly twice that in economic activity.
Most importantly, of course, they are the right thing to do. Ninety-nine percent of food stamp recipients have incomes below the poverty line. It is the job of good government to help vulnerable families get back on their feet. In the words of Harry Truman:
Nothing is more important in our national life than the welfare of our children, and proper nourishment comes first in attaining this welfare.
That is why, when he declared that ``the moment is at hand to put an end to hunger in America,'' Richard Nixon called for a significant expansion of the food stamp program to ``provide poor families enough food stamps to purchase a nutritionally complete diet.''
This is something we all used to agree on. But now we are seeing a farm bill that cuts deeply into food stamps, and I ask again, how can anyone possibly support this?
Keep in mind, food stamps have already seen deep and dangerous cuts. If you look at the fridge in the picture that I am holding up, this represents where we should be in terms of access to food. But because of the recent expiration of the Recovery Act provisions, food stamps have already been cut by $5 billion next year, and they will be cut by $11 billion over the next 3 years.
On November 1, 2013, SNAP benefits were reduced, about $36 less for a family of four each month. This means that a family of four loses $36, or 16 meals a month, in support. That is the difference between health and hunger.
Now this Congress wants to enact another $8.5 billion in cuts, meaning an additional $90 per month, and that much more food taken away from 850,000 households.
This is the proposed farm bill. SNAP cuts would result in 850,000 households, 1.7 million people, losing almost $90 a month in monthly benefits.
And already, for far too many Americans, the last few weeks of the month, this is what their fridge looks like. Why would we put any more hardship on the most vulnerable families in our Nation, families who are already battling food insecurity and hunger? They will have an empty refrigerator. No one should go hungry due to food stamp cuts.
However you cut it, this is a terrible policy. Cutting food stamps will cause more hunger and health problems. These cuts are a dereliction of our responsibility as Members of Congress and our moral responsibility to help the least fortunate among us.
As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has said:
We must form a ``circle of protection'' around programs that serve the poor and vulnerable in our Nation and throughout the world.
Or in the words of Pope Francis:
The scandal that millions of people suffer from hunger must not paralyze us, but push each and every one of us to act--singles, families, communities, institutions, governments--to eliminate this injustice.
Mr. Speaker, this farm bill takes us in the wrong direction. Instead of helping to end hunger, it cuts food stamps by $90 a month for 1.7 million people. It forces poor families to choose between food on the table or warmth, and it does all of this while preserving loopholes and maximizing handouts for wealthy farmers and agribusinesses. We have to do better.
I hope all of my colleagues in both parties will stand up against the outrageously misplaced priorities in this farm bill. I hope we can rekindle the strong bipartisan support that existed for decades for ending hunger in America.
The astronaut Buzz Aldrin once said, ``If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger,'' and we can. This institution has the power. It has the potential to make that transformative change. We have the ability. We have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger in America. We only need the will to do what is right.
With that, I would like to yield to my colleague from Rhode Island, who is such a strong supporter of families in this Nation and who has seen the ravages of families who have lost their unemployment benefits; and now what we intend to do is not only have they lost their unemployment benefits, we want to make sure, with this farm bill, what it would mean is that they are hungry and that they are cold. I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline) for being here tonight.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I can't thank the gentleman enough for your eloquence and what clarity you brought to the discussion around the connection between the low-income energy assistance program and the food stamp program and taking it out of the realm of what people are trying to do, which is to demean it and talk about it as a scheme or a loophole, none of which is true. We can talk about some schemes and some loopholes in this bill, but they don't apply where it has to do with the food stamp beneficiaries.
I want to pick up on a point that you made about the safety net. The farm bill--and I had the opportunity to work in 2008 on the farm bill, and particularly the nutrition piece--has always been a safety net for farmers and for those who are the beneficiaries of the nutrition programs. That is the link that was established, so that the benefits would go nationwide, not to a particular region of the country, not to a particular population, but a safety net so that we could make sure that people in bad times, in difficult times, could be able to sustain themselves. That is what has been broken apart here with this farm bill.
The point is that where the farm bill conferees will say that they are cutting back on these payments to farmers, what they have done is to create a series of other programs where these folks can make themselves whole through crop insurance, through putting more farm managers on the land and no restrictions as to how many you can put at $125,000 a pop. So they found ways in terms of which they make these folks whole.
The only beneficiaries in the farm bill who have no place to go when you cut back on that $90 a month are the food stamp recipients. So you have yanked the safety net away from them and you have done it to benefit the wealthiest farm interests in the Nation. It is wrong.
That bipartisan support we had in the past for a safety net is what created strength. I am sad to tell you that that has been rent asunder, and we cannot let that happen.
I am going to encourage my colleagues--and I know you will--that we will defeat this effort to leave people without sustenance in this Nation.
I thank the gentleman for participating tonight.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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