Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005--Motion to Proceed

NATIVE HAWAIIAN GOVERNMENT REORGANIZATION ACT OF 2005--MOTION TO PROCEED

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Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator from Arkansas yield for a question?

Mrs. LINCOLN. Absolutely, I yield to my good friend from Illinois who has done so much on the issue of hunger.

Mr. DURBIN. Let me say at the outset it is my great honor to cochair with the Senator from Arkansas this effort relative to hunger, hunger awareness. It has brought us together in terms of offering resolutions, in terms of offering legislation, filling grocery bags. We have done a lot of things together in this effort.

I am fortunate to work with Senator Lincoln. She comes to this issue driven by her faith and her family. They are linked together in her speech today and in her life. There is hardly a decision she makes--I know from having worked with her for so many years--that is not driven by her understanding of the impact of life on her family and what it means to so many other families.

As we have met in a variety of places, filling boxes and bags with groceries, we both had cause to reflect on what leads to hunger in a prosperous Nation. How does a country so rich as America end up with hungry people? How can this be? Yet we know, as she knows, it turns out to be a lot of people are working hard to avoid hunger. It can be a mother with a low-wage, minimum wage job, a mother who has been stuck in a minimum wage that this Congress has refused to increase for 9 straight years. Think about that: $5.15 an hour for 9 years. This poor mother, trying to keep her family together, put her kids in a babysitter's hands or daycare, and then put food on the table finds that many times one job, sometimes two jobs are not enough, and she ends up at that food pantry.

We expect the poorest of the poor to come in there and many times find the working poor. That is the face of hunger found with many of our senior citizens. I cannot imagine these poor people, many of them alone in life, struggling with medical bills and fixed incomes, never knowing where they are going to turn for a helping hand, who stumble into a food pantry where they can find a loving face, a warm embrace and a bag full of groceries to keep them going.

I found that this last week when I was up in Chicago at the Native American Center on the North Side where a lot of American Indian families rely on their pantry. I said hello to the ladies who were running it. They said, sadly: Senator, business is just too darn good here. There are a lot of people coming in from all around the city of Chicago.

I find it in my hometown, Springfield, IL, at St. John's bread line, which has been there for years. I have been over there serving food once in a while. So many people rely on them.

In Chicago, only 9 percent of the half-million people who seek services from the Chicago Food Depository are homeless. The rest have a home to go to but nothing in the refrigerator and nothing in the cupboard. These people cannot afford the food they need.

Think of that: 37 million people in America, this great and prosperous country, living in poverty; many low-income families supported by jobs that do not pay a livable wage in a country where this Congress will not enact a law to raise that minimum wage. It could be that paying for health care has caused many of these families to be unable to afford food.

America's Second Harvest released a national hunger study showing that in Chicago 41 percent of households neglected their food budget to cover utility costs. You can understand that in the cold winter in Chicago. Last year, natural gas bills went up 20 percent. We were lucky. It could have been worse. And many of these families had to decide: Pay the utility bill, risk a cutoff or buy some food? It may be a combination of factors, but the food budget is often the first thing they cut.

Today, June 7, is National Hunger Awareness Day. Senator Lincoln and I have come to the Senate encouraging our colleagues and all those following this debate to celebrate and commend the heroic efforts of so many emergency food banks, soup kitchens, school meal programs, community pantries, and so many others that make a difference in fighting hunger.

I don't know if Senator Lincoln's hometown is the same as mine, but there is a day each year when the letter carriers all pick up food. You put out the bags of food for them. They pick them up. God bless the letter carriers; they collect that food, give it to the pantries to give to hungry people. Here are men and women who probably are footsore from all the miles they have to walk, and they walk an extra mile for the hungry of America. My hat is off to them.

Federal nutrition programs are critically important and they are not reaching enough people. Many parents still skip meals so their kids can eat. Many kids do not have the balanced meals they deserve.

Let me add, too, I am sure the Senator, as a mother of twins, will appreciate this. When I go to school lunch programs, sometimes it is depressing. Giving kids a helping of tater tots, next to a slice of pizza is not exactly my idea of fighting obesity, encouraging nutrition, and feeding kids the right things.

We need to have good nutrition programs. We need to work overtime to make sure the food given to these kids does make a difference. At the Nettlehorst School on Broadway Avenue in Chicago, which I visited a few weeks ago, we opened a salad bar for the kids for school lunch. Guess what. They were all crowded around, filling up their salad trays. They will eat good food if you present it in the right way. We need good nutrition programs with good food to make sure our kids grow the right way.

Hunger drains the strength of the people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to provide enough food, or the right kinds of food, for themselves or their family. A few blocks away, near a school over on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Southeast Washington, DC, get there early enough in the morning, around 8 o'clock, stand by the drugstore and watch these kids file in to buy bags of potato chips and pop or soft drinks to eat as breakfast on the way to school. Too many of these children rely on that for their only nutrition. I wish their parents could do better or do more. I wonder, sometimes, if they are able to. I don't know if they are. But what those kids are buying costs them money. Maybe those parents could have done a better job. Maybe the school could do a better job. As a Nation, we all need to do a better job.

In a land of abundance, the kind of sacrifice that many families have to make to feed their family members is deplorable and unnecessary. We should end hunger in the United States. Working together, we can.

I salute my colleague from the State of Arkansas. The hour is late, and she has a couple of kids at home waiting for her to get home, maybe to fix dinner. But whatever the reason, she took the time to come to the Senate tonight to remind all of us of our civic responsibility, our social responsibility and our moral responsibility to view hunger as a challenge that we can face and conquer.

I see the Senator from Alabama is probably here to speak. I have another statement to make, but I will defer to him since he has been waiting. Then when he is finished, I will ask to speak again.

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