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Make Common Sense Changes to End Hunger

Floor Speech

Date: March 6, 2014
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Unemployed and Low-Income Entitlements and the Safety Net

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, House Republicans, led by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, criticize our Nation's antipoverty programs. Some want to drastically change them, and others want to eliminate them altogether. Over the past 6 months, we have seen $19 billion in cuts to SNAP alone, our Nation's premier antihunger program.

Participation in SNAP reached an all-time high a few years ago because of the Great Recession, the worst economic period since the Great Depression. That is because people were either unemployed or underpaid.

If you want to reduce SNAP participation, it is simple: put more people back to work and better paying jobs. Yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report showing how easy one step is. They found that increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 would move about 3.5 million people off of SNAP, simply because they wouldn't need it.

We shouldn't arbitrarily cut antipoverty programs like SNAP. We must make commonsense changes like increasing the minimum wage if we are truly going to end hunger in this country.

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