Hunger and the Ryan Budget

Floor Speech

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Mr. BECERRA. I thank the gentlelady from Connecticut, my good friend Rosa DeLauro, for not just this evening, but for the years of work that she has done in committee, for her district, and simply in Congress as being one of the champions of not just children and families who are in need, but the fight to make sure that all these families have an opportunity to have access to real nutrition, not just food, but real nutrition.

Because there were days when ketchup was called a vegetable. And some people made the fight to make sure that nutrition really meant good food, so that if we were going to help Americans--as we want to, as good Americans, help our fellow Americans--then let's be sure we're doing it so that they end up healthy Americans as well.

So we're here to talk about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. SNAP is the acronym. But really what we're here to talk about is the fact that in America children still go to bed hungry. It's hard to believe, but that's the way it is for too many families in our country.

Now, the numbers are staggering. They're staggering because of the Bush recession which left so many Americans in a place they had never been before. In fact, you had to go back some 70, 80 years to find a situation similar, when we saw the Great Depression in America.

We went from somewhere in the mid-twenties, some 26 million Americans who qualified for SNAP assistance, to over 45 million, around 45 million families during the height of this Great Recession who qualified for benefits. Most of those folks who qualified included families with children, or seniors, or persons with disabilities. It should come as no surprise. But what's really disheartening is to see how many Americans live in extreme poverty, a life that most of us would not recognize.

When we talk about extreme poverty, we are talking about Americans who are living on less than $2 a day. The number of Americans who were living on less than $2 a day doubled during the Bush recession. The number of poor children who were in extreme poverty doubled during the Bush recession. Most of the people we're talking about, as my colleagues have said earlier, are living on less than $22,000 a year as a family of four. Those in extreme poverty are living on, obviously, far less. With an individual, not a family but just an individual, we're talking about someone who would have to have an income of $11,000 or less to be able to qualify for any assistance with the SNAP program.

What probably makes it the most difficult for many of us here in Congress and for most Americans to really grapple with as to this issue of food insecurity and children in America going to sleep hungry is the fact that this Congress is taking on legislation which would actually provide tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires at this very moment that we speak about food insecurity. So it is difficult to comprehend how we could say to Americans today, who are working hard but earning very little and who are trying to figure out how to keep their kids from going to sleep hungry at night, that we still have the money to provide tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires but that we can't figure out a way to continue a great program called SNAP that relies on our farmers to grow this food and then to make some of it available at a discounted rate to American families who are having a tough time.

This is all about values. This is all about the American family. It's all about whether we believe in the better days still to come for our country.

I happen to be someone who grew up in a very tiny house--about a 600-square-foot home--with my three sisters. My father got about a sixth grade education. My mother came from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, when she married my father at the age of 18. They came to Sacramento, California, with only the money they had in their pockets. They never once had to ask for assistance. They worked very hard. They were fortunate that they always found a way to make ends meet. I never had the Converse or the Keds or the Levi's jeans. My first bike was a bike that my friend was willing to sell to my father and me because he had just gotten a new one, but I never went to sleep hungry.

So I will tell you right now that it's a different thing to experience something where the thing you want the most before you go to sleep is a bite to eat. Too many of our kids are upset that they didn't get to watch that television program or didn't get to play on the computer very much at night. There are still too many American children who are concerned that, when they go to bed, they wish they'd have something else in their stomachs. I believe America has the moral fiber to say that we're going to deal with this problem.

I thank the gentlelady from Connecticut for, once again, continuing the fight, because the reality is that we could figure out a way to help millionaires and billionaires continue to be successful and create the next wave of wealthy and successful Americans. At the same time, we should be able to figure out a way to make sure that the SNAP program is there for Americans who, through no fault of their own, find themselves without work and who, through no fault of their own, are trying to figure out how they will let their children go to bed with full stomachs. If we do this the right way, we'll get it solved.

I sat on the Bowles-Simpson Commission a year and a half ago, which found a way to save $4 trillion in our budget. It did not touch the SNAP program. I sat on the supercommittee, which was supposed to also fashion a budget deficit reduction deal, and that task force was also going to come up with a deal that would not have touched the SNAP program. We can certainly do far better than what we see in the House Republican budget, which is going after the SNAP program. I encourage all of my colleagues to stand up, not just for the SNAP program but for Americans today, because there are some families who tonight are trying to figure out how they can keep their children from going to bed hungry.

So I thank the gentlelady from Connecticut for all she has done for so long to champion this issue.

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Mr. BECERRA. Some people don't believe that that's the case. That is America.

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