Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I would like to thank the chairwoman of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry for her great work in bringing a bill to the floor today that does a lot of justice for families in Connecticut and across the country who are fighting every single day to put food on the table for their loved ones.

The fact is, although people have an impression that our State is a wealthy one, we have a handful of the poorest cities in the country, and we have tens of thousands of people who have been ravaged by this economy. These nutrition programs funded in the underlying bill are an absolute lifeline for families who have been, largely temporarily, hit straight across the brow by this devastating recession.

In Connecticut, though, for some people who don't know our State, it is hard to imagine that 11 percent of the population is today receiving SNAP benefits. One out of every ten people--one out of every ten families in Connecticut--right now relies on food stamps to either pay for their food in whole or in part. That is over 400,000 people in Connecticut.

These are people such as the 87-year-old retiree from Southbury, CT, who lives in a small, very reasonable condo. She lives on about $1,100 a month. She has gone through a $100,000 home equity line of credit, but her condo fees and her electric bill--because she lives in a little condo that is heated by electricity alone--basically eat up the entirety of her budget. She couldn't eat without foods stamps. She couldn't eat without these benefits. They keep her alive, as they do for millions of seniors all across this country.

On the other end of the age spectrum is another Southbury resident. Southbury, frankly--Connecticut, in general--doesn't have a reputation as being a town in need, but they have hundreds of SNAP recipients, just as in every town across Connecticut. Mrs. Smith is an unemployed mother. She made a six-figure salary for decades. When her husband became disabled, she was the sole breadwinner for her family. The recession hit her, just as it has hit hundreds of thousands of others across the country, and she lost her job. It is now the $300 she gets per month in SNAP benefits that allows her to feed her kids.

She is out there doing everything we ask. She is looking for a job. She is trying to get back to work, but she has lost her unemployment benefits. They have been exhausted, and now she needs this money in order to live.

The fact is 61 percent of all SNAP participants are families with children, and 33 percent of all SNAP recipients are families with elderly or disabled members in their families. These are the most vulnerable in our country, and they need a strong SNAP program in this bill.

I am one of a handful of Senators who cast a vote yesterday to add some money back, but the fact is the real comparison is not the difference between the underlying bill and that amendment. The real comparison is between the bill we are debating now and the budget pending before the House of Representatives today.

The House Republican budget would absolutely devastate, eviscerate, obliterate the Food Stamp Program--basically rescinding this Nation's longstanding commitment to making sure kids have enough to eat when their families are out of work or have hit hard times.

One of the reasons Republicans in the House in particular have come so hard, so consistently against foods stamps is because they categorize it as an overly generous handout to people who don't need it. Well, this week I am testing that theory. This week, because we are debating this bill on the floor of the Senate, I decided to see what it would be like to live on the average food stamp benefit for people in my State of Connecticut.

That average benefit in Connecticut is about $4.80 a day. I am finding out--now 3 days into this--even on this budget for just a week, it is pretty hard to eat enough to just not be hungry, never mind eating healthy foods. I went to the grocery store to buy some fruit and vegetables for the week and could barely find anything that fit within that budget. I was able to buy some bananas for 69 cents a pound. I wanted to get some peanut butter, but the only kind of peanut butter I could get was the kind loaded with preservatives because the stuff that is better for you costs a lot more.

Over and over again, people who are right now on food stamps are going hungry, never mind the kind of hunger they would be confronted with if we further cut this program. They have to make choices every day when feeding their kids: Do I give them enough calories so they will go without hunger pains for the day or do I try to get them a smaller amount of food that is maybe a bit better for them? That is what these families have to think about every single day.

I am not suggesting doing this budget for a week allows me to walk more than a few steps in their shoes, but it is an education on how little one gets out of this benefit today, and it is a caution for this body to stand up to the House of Representatives, if the farm bill gets to conference, to make sure these cuts don't get any worse.

The stories of the senior citizen and the unemployed mother in Southbury, CT, are two of millions of stories all across this country. These are people who have paid their dues, who are playing by the rules, but who just need a little help from us in a bad economy. By no means is this program an overly luxurious handout.

Let me tell you, from a very brief anecdotal experience, it is pretty hard to go without hunger on $4.80 a day, never mind trying to provide a healthy meal for your kids.

I just wanted to come to the floor this evening and applaud the efforts of our colleagues who are trying to push through a bill that will get to conference so we can be in a strong position to defend the nutrition titles of this bill which are keeping people--kids, the disabled, and the elderly--alive today.

There are those of us who would have liked to have seen even more support in this bill for nutrition programs. We failed in that attempt earlier this week, but we are united in the fact that a farm bill that comes out of the House and the Senate and goes to the President's desk has to keep the promise we have made to generations of kids across this country--we are going to make sure you have enough to eat.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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