Special Note: The Progress Report will be temporarily suspended starting tomorrow and will return on Monday. We wish everyone a happy and safe holidays!
As the holidays approach, more American kitchen tables will be empty than at any time in recent memory. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a report saying that “food insecurity” rates are the highest they’ve been since the government began keeping track. Food pantries across the country, meanwhile, are struggling to meet escalating demands for their services, while key safety net measures that could keep homes headed and food on the table, like unemployment insurance and food stamps, are imperiled by Republican obstruction in Congress. Worse, many conservatives and too many in the mainstream media don’t seem to take this crisis seriously — meaning that more families are likely to be left out in the cold.
NO FOOD: As one might expect, tough economic times have created dire situations for many American families, literally keeping many from putting food on the table. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, last year 14.7 percent of American families were “food insecure,” meaning they had trouble feeding one or more family members because of a lack of financial means. This was the highest rate of food insecurity since the USDA began collecting statistics 15 years ago. This means that 50.2 million people lived in food insecure households, including 17.2 million children. According to USDA research, 12.2 million adults and 5.4 million children lived in households with drastic food insecurity. Children’s Health Watch notes that in households with very young children, the rate of food insecurity rose last year to 25.4 percent, from 24.5 percent, meaning an additional 483,000 children under the age of six lived in food insecure households in 2009. Less than half of the affected families — 43 percent — were below the federal poverty line, meaning lack of food isn’t a problem limited to the very poor. Black and Latino households, and households headed by single mothers, were disproportionately affected by food insecurity, with rates almost double the national average. At this time of year, many families turn to food pantries — in fact, the largest rise in food pantry use was over the last two years — and the pantries are struggling to keep up with demand. “Last month there wasn’t a moment when people weren’t waiting in line at least three to four deep to get food. It was non-stop for the entire three hours we were open,” said one food pantry worker in Marietta, OH. “There have been a lot of laid-off workers, and for the last couple of years we’ve been seeing some situations where two families live in the same house.”
IGNORING THE ISSUE: As is too often the case, many prominent conservatives are less than concerned with the plight of working families struggling during these hard economic times. Radio host Rush Limbaugh took up the USDA report, but couldn’t quite figure out what “food insecurity” actually was. He hypothesized that “food insecurity is what causes obesity,” because “if you eat too much to deal with your food insecurity, then you get fat.” He then mocked the idea of “fighting off hunger,” saying that “you can actually see it….you go inside Publix or any grocery store, you can see them walk down the aisles, they reach for something and then they don’t. It’s an amazing thing to watch, people fighting off hunger.” If conservatives aren’t demeaning this crisis, they’re ignoring it. Fox News did not mention the USDA’s report at all and did not tell viewers that food insecurity rates were higher than ever. Though Glenn Beck does like to tell his fans to save and stockpile food, as he did this month, it’s for made-up reasons involving an imminent government collapse. Sadly, though, this inattention wasn’t limited to the conservative Fox News. A Nexis search of cable news networks revealed only four mentions of “food insecurity” following the USDA report, compared with, for example, 53 mentions of “royal wedding.”
POLICY STRUGGLES: The inattention to food insecurity in the public discourse has predictably lead to lagging action to address the issue in Washington. Unemployment insurance and federal food assistance have proved to work when it comes to addressing poverty. As the Center for American Progress notes, unemployment insurance pulled 3.3 million people — including 1 million children — out of poverty in 2009 alone. This is more people than the entire population of the Chicago metropolitan area. Food stamps alone lifted 2.4 million children out of “deep poverty,” which is greater than the number of children living in Los Angeles County. These programs are not only morally responsible, but also benefit the economy. CAP Senior Fellow Joel Berg estimates that hunger costs the economy $126 billion annually. Businesses will also be hurt if these programs aren’t extended, creating further economic instability — CAP’s Heather Boushey and Jordan Eizenga explain that unemployment insurance and food stamps are helping the economy recover from the recession. House Republicans cruelly blocked a continuation of unemployment insurance this week, however. The Senate actually cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, by $2 billion in 2013 in order to pay for improved school lunches. And while the Senate did finally extend the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) this week, it blocked TANF’s Emergency Contingency Fund, a successful jobs program that has created more than 250,000 subsidized jobs for low-income workers through grants to states. This type of cruel inaction will leave more families staring at empty holiday tables in the coming months. Rush Limbaugh will surely be eating well, however.
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