April 25, 1979
Page 8560
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield myself 1 minute, and then I will yield to the Senator from South Dakota.
The point we are making, may I say to the Senator from Indiana, is that what he wants to do is the responsibility of the legislative committee. I know he would like the Budget Committee to assume the responsibility for reducing benefits by 18 percent, but we do not have the authority to do that legislatively, and to make room for it without any assurance that the Agriculture Committee will exercise its authority in that way would be irresponsible.
With respect to these people who have got more than $9,000 in annual income, on the average that number is minuscule in percentage terms: 3 percent. That is mainly large families, who have enough members so that with the per capita allowance that is the result. The $3,600 figure is a fair representation of the income of people who benefit from this program, and if you want to get at the 3 percent by cutting the vast majority whose income is less than $3,600 by 18 percent, that is one route, but it is not a route that the Budget Committee can take, and certainly not one we chose to take.
How much time does the Senator from South Dakota wish?
Mr. McGOVERN. Ten minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. President, when I came to the floor some time ago the Senator from Kansas (Mr. DOLE) was speaking, and said some very flattering things about my part in the Nation's nutritional programs.
I simply want to respond by saying that from the very beginning, this effort to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in the United States, which was given new force some 10 years ago and has been proceeding steadily ever since, has from the beginning been a bipartisan effort, in which Senator DOLE has played a central role. One of the reasons why the nutritional programs are as strong as they are in the United States is that they, from the very beginning, have had a strong bipartisan base.
The facts are that the 1969 war on hunger, which began with the White House Conference on Food and Nutrition, was begun by the Nixon administration; and no matter what other deficiencies that administration may have had, they did make a very remarkable commitment, some 10 years ago, to the elimination of hunger in this country. That commitment has been kept by Congress, and is one that we certainly do not want to jeopardize by the amendment now before us.
The Senator from Indiana, with whom I have had the privilege and the pleasure to serve on the Committee on Agriculture, has referred here repeatedly to the commitment that Congress made to the American people in 1977, by placing a $6.2 billion cap on Federal expenditures under the program. But the Senator knows that that ceiling, which was placed on the cost of the food stamp program in 1977, was placed there on the basis of the best estimates we had available to us at that time, that food prices would rise by 3 to 4 percent a year and that at the same time the unemployment rate would decline. The whole commitment to the ceiling was predicated on those estimates, which have now proved to be inaccurate. Instead of a 3 to 4 percent increase in the cost of food, every housewife knows, without being told by these statistics that we had from the Congressional Budget Office, that the actual price increase has been 10 percent a year.
The commitment we made to the American people was to see to it that no citizen went hungry in this country because of lack of income. That was the commitment, and we estimated we could meet that commitment with a $6.2 billion ceiling.
Mr. President, there is nothing about an action of Congress in 1977 that is so sacred it cannot be adjusted to meet the new conditions that face us in 1979. One Congress cannot bind another by legislative enactment. The commitment that really counts, that I think the American people are holding us to on moral and political grounds, is that we said in that 1977 Food Stamp Reform Act that we were going to provide a minimum level of benefits. No family, in this richest of all countries, should go hungry at a time when we know we have enough agricultural abundance and food in this country to meet the needs of all of our people.
The issue before the Senate today is not whether the error rate in the food stamp program should be reduced. Everyone is in favor of that. The congressional budget resolution now before us, calling for funding of $7.2 billion, is predicated on the Budget Committee's assertion that the administration has to save some $355 million in administrative changes in order to stay within that $7.2 billion recommendation by the Budget Committee. So we have already sent a message to the Department of Agriculture if we approve the Budget Committee's recommendation. We have said, "Find some way to save $355 million in the administration of this program."
I tried to send that kind of a message to the Pentagon yesterday, with a recommendation, not of an 18 percent cut in the defense budget, which is what is being proposed here in the budgets of the poor, hungry people, but of eight-tenths of 1 percent, That was all we tried to recommend in the way of a message to the Pentagon, and it was defeated on this floor by a vote of 69 to 24. If we were to recommend a cut in military spending commensurate with what the Senator from Indiana is proposing on nutrition here today, we would have to cut that military budget by $20 billion.
So to talk about a $1 billion reduction in food stamp benefits to the people of the United States is not a message to the Department of Agriculture, it is a message to the poor of this country that they are going to eat less in 1980 and 1981 than they have in the current year.
You cannot save a billion dollars by administrative actions alone in a $6 billion program. If you could, the Senate Committee on Agriculture would not have taken over 3 years of careful investigation of this program to present to the Senate the 1977 Food Stamp Reform Act. That act did tighten up the food stamp program and remove most of the abuses that the Senator from Indiana and his supporters are talking about here today. We did eliminate 1 million of the higher income participants in the program at that time. We reduced the benefits to 5 million or 6 million other Americans participating in the program, to the point, Mr. President, where I fear we have actually worked a hardship on many of our people, especially the elderly citizens of this country, by the tightening up we have already done in the program.
I supported those food stamp reforms, but it was an austere, tough bill that we passed here in 1977. It has eliminated the kind of abuses that the Senator from Indiana and others are talking about here today. Over one-half of all food stamp households participating in the new food stamp program have incomes of less than $3,600 a year.
Three-quarters, 75 percent, of all the families in the United States participating on food stamps — I am talking about family income — have less than $4,800 a year in income.
Mr. President, Senators make that much in a month and we have subsidized meals in the Senate dining room. I am not complaining. But I want to point out to my colleagues that when we talk about food stamp participants as though they are ripping off the Treasury of the United States and then look at the fact that the overwhelming majority of these families have less than $4,800 a year in income, it becomes clear this is hardly a luxury program.
Only 3 percent have incomes over $9,000 a year, and all of those are very large families who are receiving only minimal assistance under this program.
All the talk about pro rata reduction of food stamp benefits if we run short of funds versus some other method is a specious argument. It is really a prostitution of the term to call people with incomes of $6,000 "high income people," and people with $3,000 income "low income people." In today's inflationary situation they are in trouble anywhere in the range of $3,000 to $6,000.
I might add, Mr. President, that it is my firm conviction—
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. McGOVERN. Will the Senator yield me 5 additional minutes ?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. McGOVERN. It is my firm conviction that if we did not have the food stamp program and other nutritional programs on the books in this country, the long term bills that our society would have to pay would be much greater. There are studies which have been made by the Department of Agriculture indicating that where a family gets an approved, commonsense diet, it can reduce their medical bills by as much as one-fourth.
Those are bills which would come due if we eliminate, as the amendment of the Senator from Indiana would do, some 18 to 20 percent of the benefits under this program.
That is the message we are going to send if this amendment is agreed to.