Hunger and the Ryan Budget
Floor Speech
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, in tonight's Democratic Special Order, we will be highlighting the severe and immoral cuts made to antihunger and nutrition programs in the House Republican budget.
Right now, millions of American families and children are suffering from food insecurity. As the map here clearly shows, food hardship is a national tragedy. It is present in each and every congressional district. The districts that are highlighted in pink and in red have the most food hardships, while the districts in yellow are not far behind. Districts highlighted in blue have the lowest food hardship, but the national average is that nearly one in five Americans struggles with food hardship. Simply put, they are at risk of going hungry.
According to a study done by the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities, the Republican budget, composed by Chairman Paul Ryan and endorsed by Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, would ``impose extraordinary cuts in programs that serve as a lifeline for our Nation's poorest and our most vulnerable citizens.'' Not the least of these are America's critical antihunger initiatives like food stamps and the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, program, all of which the Ryan Republican budget threatens to slash by as much as 19 percent.
That means, for example, that over 8 million men, women, and children could be cut from food stamps, and 2 1/2 million pregnant and post-partum women, infants and children may be slashed from the WIC program. The Ryan budget slashes these antihunger initiatives while preserving subsidies for Big Oil, tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. It is a reverse Robin Hood budget that, in the words of Robert Greenstein, the head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, would ``likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history, and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times and possibly in the Nation's history.''
As many religious and ethical observers have noted this week, the decisions made in this budget are antithetical to our basic moral values. Last Friday, 60 Catholic leaders and theologians wrote a letter to Chairman Ryan arguing that his budget was ``morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation, and a commitment to the common good. A budget that turns its back on the hungry, the elderly, and the sick while giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few can't be justified in Christian terms.''
This Ryan Republican budget is particularly cruel when you consider the scale of need in the current economy where 13 million are unemployed and one in six are living below the official poverty line.
As another group of Christian leaders, the Circle of Protection, has urged, Congress should ``give moral priority to programs that protect the life and the dignity of poor and vulnerable people in these difficult times.''
Our antihunger initiatives like food stamps and WIC are just such programs. Tonight, I'm proud to be joined by my colleagues. We will discuss the profound impact the Ryan-Romney Republican budget will have on these programs.
With that, I am so pleased to ask my colleague from California (Mr. Farr), who is the ranking member of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, to continue our dialogue for this evening.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I want to thank my colleague. I want to thank him for his eloquence. He makes a comment that these are not just statistics about the people who are being hurt. The fact of the matter is last week in my district during our district break I did an event on hunger in our community. And there I had the head of the Connecticut food bank, the woman who heads up the End Hunger Connecticut organization, and a young woman, her name was Susan Vass from Branford, Connecticut. She stood up and with tears in her eyes talked about her circumstances. Out of a job, that's someone who is a former pension adviser, a human resources director who's now unemployed, cannot find a job. She has three boys 18, 14 and 10 years old. They eat--she stood there crying--one meal a day. If we cut back on food stamps, and because she's now not eligible, she can't get them because her unemployment benefits take her over the mark, so she relies on the Connecticut food bank.
And when the food stamps are cut, the food banks don't get the emergency assistance program funding. So her ability to feed her family will continue to drop.
It's wrong. It's immoral in a land that has plenty and we are bountiful with food in this Nation.
I'm so delighted that our colleague, Jackie Speier from California, has joined us tonight for this conversation.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I thank the gen tle lady. Your words are poignant. If anybody would like to do this, they really should walk in people's shoes and understand what it's about. When the American people say that they don't believe Congress understands what their lives are about, in this instance you bear it out. Thank you.
Someone whom we are deeply going to miss in the next session of this Congress, there hasn't been a greater champion for women and their families in the House of Representatives than our colleague from California, Congresswoman Woolsey.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I thank the gen tle lady for her words, and for her telling about her personal experience.
I'd like to recognize the vice chair of our Democratic Caucus, the Honorable Xavier Becerra of California--which, by the way, has over a 19 percent food hardship rate.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I thank the gentleman.
I think one of the most important things that you commented on tonight was the number of U.S. households living below the World Bank measure of severe poverty in developing nations. That means they're living on less than $2 a day per person. At the start of 2011, we had 1.4 million households, 2.8 million children--that's 800,000 households--who were living on $2 a day, and we have colleagues in this institution who want to take food out of the mouths of those children.
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Ms. DeLAURO. It is a heartbreaking subject. And when you think about in that budget when we talk on averages, the number is a $150,000 or a $187,000 tax break to the wealthiest people in the Nation. They don't worry what they're picking up at the grocery store. They're eating well. Their kids are eating well. Their grandkids are eating well, as ours are in this institution. But it's the people that we represent who are in difficulty, and they need to know to look to us to help them when it is so tough out there economically. This program is working in the way that it should.
I thank the gentleman.
Now someone who knows what is going on really in the heartland of our country where they have suffered severe economic depression, and that is in the State of Ohio. Let me welcome to this conversation, our colleague, Congresswoman Fudge.
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Ms. DeLAURO. I thank the gentleman.
My God, what we could do if we had the will to do it. That's what this is about. It's a question of our
values and where our priorities are. Is it about our kids, or is it about the richest 1 percent of the people in this Nation getting $150,000 or $187,000 in a tax break?
The gentlewoman from California has been extraordinary in her fight for the food stamp program, and she hasn't been afraid to take on anyone in any party on this issue of making sure that the food stamp program is secure. I recognize the gen tle lady from California (Ms. Lee).
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