On March 13, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry held a hearing examining the impact of the federal Food Stamp program (FSP) on children’s health and nutrition. The current authorization of the program expires at the end of FY2007. The food stamp program is intended to help low-income individuals and families improve their diet by supplementing their income with benefits to purchase nutritious food, such as meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables.
In a press release, Chair Joe Baca (D-CA) said, “I am concerned about the obesity epidemic in America, especially among children. This is a serious health risk for them and their families and also will have a harmful impact on our communities and economy. As chair of the nutrition subcommittee, I intend to focus attention on this problem and make sure our domestic food programs are providing the information and resources people need to make sound decisions about a nutritious diet and healthy lifestyle.”
“As the father of two young children, I know how hard nutritional education can be; however, given the obesity crisis our nation is currently facing, it is absolutely imperative we do what we can to help curb this epidemic. Providing increased fruit and vegetable options in the food assistance programs can help improve the quality of many Americans’ diets, which is why we must work to improve the nutrition aspect of the Food Stamp Program as we move forward in the 2007 Farm Bill process,” said Ranking Member Jo Bonner (R-AL), in the same press release.
Nancy Montanez Johner, undersecretary of food, nutrition, and consumer services at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), said that the FSP “provides substantial benefits to low-income families with children, helping them to stretch their buying power. About half of all food stamp recipients are children, nearly 80 percent of food stamp benefits go to households with children, and over 80 percent of all children who are eligible for benefits receive them.” Ms. Montanez Johner described the USDA’s outreach activities to low-income families, including national medical campaigns, radio and television public services announcements, coordination with state social services and faith-based organizations. She outlined the USDA’s proposals for the reauthorization of the FSP, including: strengthening nutrition education to combat rising obesity rates; excluding the value of college savings plans from the resource limit because it “supports [the] working poor, encourages focused savings for children’s futures, and recognizes that households should not have to deplete college savings plans in order to get nutrition assistance”; eliminating the cap on the dependent care deduction; and excluding combat-related military pay for the purposes of determining eligibility.
Calling the FSP “the nation’s most important bulwark against hunger,” James D. Weill, president of Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), described the current pressures on the program as poverty and food insecurity have increased. “The number of people living in households facing food insecurity the government phrase for families without the resources to feed themselves enough, or unable for economic reasons to purchase a healthy diet, or otherwise struggling with hunger rose from 31 million in 1999 to 38.2 million in 2004, and then fell again to 35.1 million in 2005…More than 12 million children live in food insecure households,” he said. Mr. Weill applauded recent reforms to the FSP, including the move toward electronic benefits, which he said “reduc[ed] the stigma of participation,” eligibility for legal immigrants, the flexibility and responsiveness of the administration to the program, and fraud investigations. Mr. Weill advocated increasing the FSP benefit because “the average benefit of roughly $1 per person per meal is not enough to purchase an adequate diet.” He echoed Ms. Montanez Johner’s call to revise resource rules: “Current resource limits are terribly restrictive $3,000 for households with an elderly or disabled member; $2,000 for other households…Allowing families that suffer unemployment, involuntary part-time work, illness, or other financial emergencies to access food stamp benefits without exhausting their resources will help those families rebound and promote their self-sufficiency long-term, and will further bipartisan goals of fostering savings and asset development.” He closed by asking the subcommittee to continue its focus on nutrition education and obesity among FSP recipients.
“Because of food stamps’ creation 40 years ago, it’s rare to find a starving child in America…While we can be proud that child starvation is a thing of the past in America, what is far too common still is children eating oatmeal every night for dinner because the money has just run out,” said Kim McCoy Wade, executive director of the California Association of Food Banks. Ms. McCoy Wade listed what she termed “the bureaucratic hurdles” in the way of families applying to the FSP, including different eligibility rules for immigrant families, unemployed adults without children, certain ex-offenders, and people with some assets or savings. She said that a study conducted by America’s Second Harvest, a national network of food banks, found that “long waits, repetitive paperwork, and outdated finger-imaging requirements all prevent families from completing the application process. One California study documented that it takes an average of two trips to the food stamp office to successfully submit an application.” Ms. McCoy Wade said that nutrition education is essential to the success of the FSP: “By empowering children and their parents to make healthy choices, these programs can bring about positive lifestyle changes and especially increase fruit and vegetable consumption.”
Dr. Mariana Chilton, the principal investigator of the Philadelphia GROW Project at Drexel University School of Public Health, detailed the short- and long-term effects of childhood malnutrition. She said that the FSP can lessen the risk of anemia in babies, obesity in older children, “and another recent study demonstrated that among 8,000 children followed from kindergarten to third grade, those whose families began to receive food stamps achieved significantly greater improvement in reading and math scores than those whose families stopped received food stamps.” Despite the FSP’s potential to curb childhood illness and bolster brain development, Dr. Chilton described FSP benefits as “sub-therapeutic,” saying that they provided just enough to keep families from hunger, but not enough to buy more nutritious food such as fruits and vegetables. She concluded her testimony: “Each cut comes with a face, a name, and, in some cases, a doctor’s bill. Think of all the food stamp recipients as one American family you are providing food stamps for. Think that any reduction in food stamps will make our young children more food insecure, more likely to be hospitalized, more likely to be sick, less able to think, less able to grow well, to achieve in school, less able to relate to her peers, and will lessen their chances for success as part of the future workforce. Food stamp program expansions will protect children from these insidious side effects of hunger and food insecurity.”
Additional witnesses included: Gray Brunk, executive director of Kansas Action for Children; Janet Murguía, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza; and Rene M. Massey, Baldwin County director of the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
