Preserve the Food Stamp Program

Floor Speech

Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Speaker, this week, unfortunately, food stamps will be cut by $5 billion. We expected that. What is worse is that even deeper cuts could follow.

Conferees start negotiating a farm bill this week, and billions of dollars in cuts--in fact, $40 billion--have been proposed by Republicans in the House, which is 10 times the number of cuts passed in the bipartisan bill in the Senate.

Since I have been here in Congress, I have talked to dozens of people in my district who have come up to me and said, Thank you for fighting to preserve the food stamp program. I have never told anybody, they say, but I received food stamps at one point in my life, so thank you for fighting.

I am afraid that many Members of Congress simply don't know what it is like to be poor in America. These are real people--real human beings. The cuts that we contemplate here are not numbers on a piece of paper but are cuts that would literally take food out of the mouths of people who are hungry.

This is wrong. It cannot stand. I urge my colleagues to fight to preserve this important program.

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