A Tasteful Pursuit
Congressman Jim McGovern
at A Tasteful Pursuit in Washington, DC
Bringing political will to the table
On May 15 at Share Our Strength’s A Tasteful Pursuit dinner in Washington, DC, Congressman Jim McGovern shared his important insights on hunger and the reasons why it is more critical than ever to end hunger in the United States.
Congressman McGovern’s Speech (continued)
“But we can do so much more. If the face of hunger is not only kids, the face of hunger is senior citizens who show up in emergency rooms now because they’re taking their medicine on empty stomachs. They can’t afford the price of their prescription drugs and their food. They end up going to the emergency room and doing great damage to their insides because of that. The face of hunger is not only the homeless or the jobless. It is increasingly working families. Everybody who works with a food bank or who knows a food bank will tell you that the clients who are showing up more and more are working families. We have a problem in this country and for too long it’s been ignored. And things have gotten out of control.
“Now the good news is that some good things are happening in part because of people like you, because of the work of groups like Share Our Strength and because of the dedication of people, like those of you who are in this room. But also you have been emitting good vibes to Capitol Hill and some good things have been happening for a change. We just passed the Farm Bill in the House and the Senate and the good news is it’s veto-proof because we knew we needed to get so many votes, which is good news because the White House is trying to veto it. Now let me be honest with you, there are some things in the Farm Bill which I think stink. Like too many subsidies…don’t get me started. But the good news is this: is that the food nutrition title in this Farm Bill is extraordinary. It is a huge step forward. Ten billion dollars in new funding to help food stamp recipients, to help food banks, to help child nutrition programs. This is a huge step in the right direction. We are indexing food stamps for the first time; thanks to Newt Gingrich we stopped that a long time ago.
“I should tell you one thing: a year ago I lived on the food stamp budget for a week. I don’t know if you know this but the average food stamp benefit is three dollars a day, a dollar a meal. The minimum food stamp benefit is ten dollars a month. It’s been that way since the mid-1970s. Now last year I lived on a food stamp budget for a week. It took a lot of work. I had to go to the store with three staff people and with a calculator so I wouldn’t go over my budget. I had a food stamp recipient who helped me go through the whole thing. I have high cholesterol so I wanted to try to be as healthy as I could. I stocked up on lentils. Never want to see another lentil as long as I live. The bottom line is this: I squeaked by a year ago. I couldn’t squeak by this year. Food prices have gone up that much. We are finally acknowledging and responding to the fact that we have a food insecurity crisis in this country. People are hungry. And we need to do something about this. And we need to do something about it because we’re human beings and because it’s the right thing to do. And none of us want to be a part of a country, the richest country in the world, where people go hungry.
“Let me tell you one final thing. I helped put this hunger caucus together on the House side because we need to focus on some of these issues. We need to be able to help coordinate efforts in our battlefield to fight hunger because hunger issues fall under the jurisdiction of a number of committees. But I have come to conclude, I really believe that hunger is a problem we can solve, here in the United States and around the world. There are lots of things that we can’t solve. This is not one of them. We have the infrastructure. We have the food. We have the resources. We have everything we need to have to end hunger except one thing. Which is lack of political will. And so we need to build our political will to help give us this food nutrition title in the Farm Bill to expand our efforts in other areas, to make sure that we have innovative school feeding programs so that every kid gets a decent meal every day. We need to make sure our senior citizens get what they need, that families that are on food stamps have enough not only to buy food but nutritious food. Because fast food is bad food and we have learned that because of the food insecurity we’ve had a problem with obesity, we’ve had a problem with child diabetes, among a bunch of other things. So it’s not just giving somebody something to stick in their stomach. It’s to make sure that the food we give is nutritious. And guess what, if we do this right we also save money. So for those who say we can’t prove it, you’ll save a lot of money down the road by helping efforts early on. So we need the political will to build our victory with this Farm Bill. We can’t be a cheap date when it comes to fighting hunger. And I want to see the day when voting against anti-hunger issues is as threatening to politicians as voting against something the NRA wants or something the Chamber of Commerce wants…
“Thank you for being here. Thank you for your incredible commitment. This is inspirational…I’m going to tell you, I would say a year ago I’m not sure I would be as upbeat. We’re making strides in the right direction. With your continued help and your continued pressure on government at every level, not just the federal but the state and the local level, we’re going to end hunger in America and we’re going to end hunger around the world. Thank you very much.”
