Library of Congress photograph
Congress,
under constant, unrelenting pressure from the conservative wing, will turn
its back on the poor and hungry in America this week.
by Charlie Leck
by Charlie Leck
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I
was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me...”
[Matthew 25:35]
[Matthew 25:35]
Congress will
vote, in the next couple of days (and likely today in the House) on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP). We have known the program as food
stamps. The proposal that will probably become law will drastically cut the
food stamp program and will desperately hurt the poorest among us and many of
them will be fellow senior citizens. Families with very low income, trying to
adequately feed their children, will also be desperately hurt.
Congress has
received significant and trust-worthy reports that food stamps kept as many as
4 million people from falling into poverty last year. Under the new law,
according to the trusted, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, more than 4
million people will become ineligible for future assistance.
Hunger in
America is about to become a more significant problem than it has been in the
a long, long time.
Providing assistance
through food stamps has been a bi-partisan effort in Congress over the last
several decades. With the restructuring of Congress under the influence of the
Tea Party that is about to change. This has been our nation’s most effective
way to fight hunger ever since the end of the depression.
As Jim Wallis,
of the Sojourners organization, has recently said, food stamps are “the nation’s
foremost tool against hunger and hardship, particularly during recessions and
periods of high unemployment.”
This is a fight
in Congress between those who believe we have something of a responsibility to
care for our fellow-citizens who have fallen on hard times and those who don’t.
Now that’s blunt and cold; however, it is the absolute truth.
If you can,
communicate with your U.S. Senators and ask them to defeat this bill that the
House of Representatives is about to send over to them. We must not allow
hunger to become brutally real in America again.
_________________________
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