Senate Votes to Increase Food Supply for Hungry

Citing the needs of millions of hungry Americans, many of them children, the Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved legislation to provide $389 million in each of the next two years for emergency food supplies and increased food stamp benefits.

Sponsors described the bill, which passed 89 to 7 and now goes to the House, as Congress’ most ambitious assault on hunger in the last decade. However, Administration officials have said the legislation is too costly and that they will recommend a veto to President Reagan.

‘Out of Touch’

“Anyone who denies the existence of hunger in America today is out of touch with reality,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “This bill keeps the lifeline of emergency food assistance open to millions of Americans.”

Democrats and Republicans joined in support of the legislation, which was prompted by the revelation earlier this year that a federally sponsored program offering surplus milk, cheese, rice, bread and other commodities to the poor is running out of supplies.

The popular Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program has been serving an estimated 15 million Americans each month, often with the support of private, nonprofit charity groups. Currently, there are 20,000 TEFAP distribution sites nationwide.

Under the program, which began in 1983, surplus foods were distributed from the large stocks of surplus commodities in the warehouses of the Commodity Credit Corp.

Cheese, Milk for Needy

The program provided billions of dollars of cheese, nonfat dry milk, rice, honey, flour, cornmeal and other products to needy Americans, many of them temporarily out of work.

The food has also been available for distribution at emergency food banks and soup kitchens for the homeless, although Department of Agriculture officials have testified before Congress that less than 1% of these citizens are receiving such assistance.

This year, however, federal officials reported that the once overwhelming surplus of cheese, rice and honey has been exhausted, and that nonfat dry milk is being allocated on a month-to-month basis. Meanwhile, the TEFAP program was set to expire at the end of this year.

“In a rich society, where one-fifth of the children and about one-seventh of the total population lives in poverty, this news served as a call to action,” said Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla). “We could not allow a primary source of nutrition . . . to simply disappear.”

Under the bill, the Department of Agriculture would be required to purchase $145-million worth of high-protein commodities for distribution through the TEFAP program in each of the next two fiscal years. The bill requires the department to purchase an additional $40-million worth of commodities for food banks, soup kitchens and other emergency feeding centers through 1991.

In other provisions, the legislation would increase basic food stamp benefits by about $5 per month and expand eligibility guidelines for the poor. It would also increase federal reimbursements for school breakfast programs across the nation by roughly 3 cents per meal.

Sponsors said the bill would encourage more food stamp recipients to find work, by increasing the federal child care deduction. Currently, the government, in assessing an applicant’s income for eligibility for food stamps, recognizes up to $160 per month in child care expenses for each family. The new legislation would increase that to $160 per month, per child, if that allowance would enable a recipient to work or receive job training.

Critics Cite Cost

Critics, however, said the bill was too costly, given the nation’s budget deficit.

It would be a “sad thing” if “these kind of programs become a substitute for real hunger programs,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.). The “best kind of hunger program,” he added, “is one where the head of a household gets a job, goes into a grocery store and puts groceries on the table.”

Administration officials have also complained that the bill “inappropriately” requires the Department of Agriculture to purchase high-protein foods, adding that the bill’s liberalization of food stamp benefits would invite fraud and abuse.