National Hunger Awareness Day

Floor Speech

NATIONAL HUNGER AWARENESS DAY -- (Senate - June 10, 2008)

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today in honor of National Hunger Awareness Day. On this day, we focus on the more than 35 million people in the United States without enough to eat and reassert our commitment to assist those in need.

Millions of families live each day not knowing if they will have enough to eat. Rather than thinking about what the next meal will be, these parents worry if there will be a next meal. Rather than concentrate on homework, these children are trying not to think about their hunger pangs. In a nation as economically wealthy and agriculturally abundant as ours, this is inexcusable. If children--or adults--are hungry in America, that is a problem for all of us.

This administration has seen the number of people living in poverty rise from 31.6 million in 2000 to 36.5 million in 2006. The number of people living in households facing food insecurity rose from 31 million in 1999 to 35.5 million in 2006. In Illinois, over 158,000 households experienced hunger in 2005. If we include households that have had to struggle to put food on the table or have had to skip meals to make sure the food would last through the week, it adds up to 500,000 households in Illinois living with food insecurity. These are working families who just aren't able to make ends meet.

At a time when millions of middle class Americans are struggling to keep up with higher gas prices, grocery bills, and health care costs, more and more families are looking to Federal programs for assistance. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, applications for food stamps are on the rise at the same time recipients are making more frequent use of food pantries to fill gaps in their grocery needs. Over 26 million people nationwide are dependent on the Federal Food Stamp Program. In April, 594,590 families in Illinois received food stamps, an increase of 5.84 percent from last year and the highest level ever in Illinois, equating to 1.3 million people. And since December, participation in the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, food assistance program has increased 4 percent to a total of 296,000. But for the millions of people who don't have assistance, everything is different.

We know hunger is a reality in our communities. We see long lines at our food pantries. We have heard from seniors forced to choose between groceries and medication. And children are in our schools who have not had a decent meal since the previous day's school lunch. We see families showing up a day earlier than normal at the food pantry because the monthly pay is not stretching as far it once did. Parents are giving up their own meal to make sure their child has something to eat at night.

In the Nation that prides itself as the land of plenty, we cannot hide the fact that we need to do a better job at making sure everybody has at least enough to eat. The passage of this year's farm bill is a strong first step toward better addressing hunger in our country. The farm bill provides 10 billion additional dollars over 10 years for domestic nutrition programs that help lower income families put food on the table, including $7.8 billion for the Food Stamp Program, $1.25 billion for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and $1 billion for the fresh fruits and vegetables snack program. In Illinois, over the next 10 years, this bill will provide $373 million in additional funding to help families that haven't been able to outrun hunger.

But with one hungry person in our Nation, hunger will be a problem for all of us. I hope that we will continue to work together to fulfill our duty to end hunger in our Nation and the world.

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