End Hunger Now

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, earlier this year the House voted on the farm bill conference report, legislation that reauthorizes our Nation's agriculture policies as well as the preeminent antihunger program known as SNAP. I voted against the conference report both as a conferee and when it came before this House because it contained an $8.6 billion cut to SNAP. Even worse, it was the second major cut to SNAP in less than 6 months.

I strongly believe in our Nation's antihunger programs. Unfortunately, there are about 49 million hungry people living in our great Nation. Technically known as food insecurity, the truth is that these are low-income people who don't know where their next meal will come from. America's antihunger programs, led by SNAP, provide food to people who otherwise would have difficulty finding it, if they were able to find access to food at all.

For years, I have talked about how SNAP works, and over the past year, I have led these End Hunger Now speeches about how SNAP and other antihunger programs are working to reduce hunger in our country. That is why these two SNAP cuts, the cut in November 2013 and the cut in the farm bill, were not just disappointing, but they were actually damaging. We saw real cuts to real people.

For example, look at Luis Marin, who was profiled in the New York Daily News:

Food stamp cuts have dealt a double blow to Luis Marin and his family. Marin's hours have been cut from 30 to 20 hours a week at Red Apple Deli Supermarket in uptown's Hamilton Heights, where his boss, Ramon Murphy, is losing business because of the food stamp cutbacks. And Marin, 56, his wife, and their two little girls--who subsist on his $8-an-hour income--also saw their food stamps benefits drop to $397 a month in November and have had to change their eating habits.

It is not just low-income families in our urban areas; military families are using SNAP more than ever. In fact, military families used food stamps more in fiscal year 2013 than in any other year. Members of the military redeemed almost $104 million worth of food stamps over that time, about $5 million more than the previous year.

The thing many of my colleagues don't seem to understand is that cuts to SNAP don't just change the amount of money the Federal Government spends. As you can see from the case that I highlighted with Mr. Marin, these cuts hurt real American people. We are taking food away from children and away from poor families.

That is why I am pleased that seven of our Nation's Governors are taking the courageous stand that this Congress wouldn't take. The cut included in the farm bill was harmful, but it only affected 17 States. That is because it only dealt with a program called Heat and Eat, a program that linked LIHEAP and SNAP together. The farm bill changed the way States could continue participating in that program. Essentially, States could continue if they increased the State contribution from $1 to $20 in LIHEAP benefits. These seven States--Connecticut, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island--are playing by the new rules Congress established in the farm bill, and thankfully, they are saying that they are not going to let low-income food insecure people in their State feel the pain of these cuts, even if Congress is going to cruelly and cowardly cut SNAP in the name of deficit reduction.

I sit on the Agriculture Committee, and I remember when the committee didn't have the votes to abolish the Heat and Eat Program entirely. The $20 level was supported by the chairman of the committee and is now the law of the land. Yet the distinguished Speaker of this House continues to say that States are somehow cheating when all they are doing is following the law that he shepherded through this House. Perhaps he didn't read the bill, or perhaps he doesn't understand the fact that there are millions and millions of people in this country who are hungry.

I want to commend the Governors of these States, including the Republican Governor of Pennsylvania and the Governor of my home State of Massachusetts, for doing the right thing and taking action to prevent these cuts from taking effect and preventing their citizens from going hungry.

I am grateful to these Governors and the Governors of 10 other States who are still working to enact this change in law, and for taking the actions that many in this Congress simply did not take. I say ``thank you'' to the Governors for preventing hunger from getting worse in those States. Hopefully, they can be an example for all of us in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, we were elected to help people. These cutbacks in SNAP and other nutrition programs have hurt our fellow citizens. These cuts are unconscionable. They are a rotten thing to do. We in this Congress and the leadership of this Congress have to stop beating up on poor people, have to stop diminishing their struggle. Surely we can come together in a bipartisan way and agree that hunger is not acceptable in the richest country in the history of the world. We need to end hunger now, not make it worse. So let's come together and end hunger now.

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