Partisan dithering on the farm bill has stalled a better food stamp program

It’s a safe bet there will be long lines this holiday season.

I don’t mean at shopping malls, I mean at local food banks. With more people needing help this year and less food available to give out, it’s shaping up as a difficult holiday for many Mainers. Meanwhile, a bill that would make a big difference for families struggling to put food on the table remains stuck before Congress.

Roughly 12.9 percent of Maine households can’t always afford adequate food. This means the children who live in those households – almost 55,000 of them – cannot be assured of having three square meals per day.

If that last sentence didn’t bother you, it should. How can we expect children to reach their full potential if we can’t even provide them with enough to eat?

Nationally, nearly one-fifth of American children live in families that don’t always know where their next meal will come from. And things are getting worse. The number of Maine children at risk of hunger rose by some 3.7 percent, according to recent figures. Maine, Louisiana and Mississippi had the largest increases in food insecurity rates.

As a result, more people are going to food pantries for help. They are a diverse group: young and old, male and female, working and jobless, black and white. Most work in low-wage jobs that don’t pay enough to support a family. Others have physical or mental disabilities that prevent them from working.

Unfortunately, food pantries cannot provide nearly as much help as they used to. The federal government has cut back on its assistance to “emergency food providers.” Rising food prices have also hurt them, and private donations have been falling. So even as lines at food pantries get longer, the shelves inside get emptier.

But there’s a bigger issue, too. Food pantries are really meant to help families deal with short-term, emergency needs, such as when a parent loses a job or when a fire or natural disaster destroys a family’s home. By themselves, food pantries simply cannot deal with the large-scale, long-term problem our country now faces: that tens of millions of Americans cannot afford enough to eat.

This is where food stamps come in. Roughly 164,000 Mainers receive food stamps each month to help them buy food. Food stamps are supposed to be America’s first line of defense against hunger, and over the past few decades, the program has been very successful.

But once Congress made cuts to food stamps in 1996, the benefit for most families has shrunk a little more each year. Right now, food stamp benefits average just under $1 per-person, per-meal. And food stamps will keep shrinking in value each year until our federal government acts.

Right now there’s a bill before Congress – the farm bill – that would, among other things, strengthen food stamp benefits. It also would boost assistance for emergency food providers. Unfortunately, the country is still awaiting a farm bill with a comprehensive nutrition title.

The House of Representatives has produced a bill version with improvements to the food stamp program and the Emergency Food Assistance Program; the Senate has produced a bill that strengthens these programs further. Yet while the Senate version provides better relief to hungry people, it only funds these improvements for five years.

The rest of the farm bill is funded for 10 years.

When Congress returns from their holiday celebrations, they should find a quick compromise that includes the Senate’s improvements, but the House’s funding mechanism, so relief to millions of hungry Americans is secure.

As for millions of Americans at risk of hunger, this holiday season will not be so merry.

Sen. Susan Collins and Sen. Olympia Snowe have shown their support for a strong nutrition bill, as have Rep. Tom Allen and Rep. Mike Michaud, but the work is not finished.

Hunger will not wait for a farm bill that gets kicked around by partisan politics.

Nicole Witherbee is the federal budget analyst for the Maine Economic Policy Center. E-mail her at [email protected].