Religious Leaders Plan Drive to Fight Cuts in Food Programs

Local religious leaders said Tuesday that they will be pooling their resources nationwide to fight GOP efforts to make deep cuts in nutrition programs.

At a conference sponsored by the Southern California Interfaith Hunger Coalition, religious leaders said the moves by Republicans would increase the ballooning number of hungry people, mostly children, in the United States.

In the next few weeks, the local leaders say they will draft their own plan to oppose the GOP proposal and will work with state and national officials. Earlier in the day, charity officials met in Washington to announce similar plans.

Congressional Republicans, led by incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), have proposed dismantling the nation’s federal nutrition network. Under the House Republicans’ “contract with America,” the federal government would give up responsibility for the programs and have states administer them. The GOP’s proposed Personal Responsibility Act would combine all nutrition programs into one and cut spending by 5%. The speakers in Los Angeles agreed that the GOP needs to make cuts in government, but said programs to serve the hungry should be retained.

“How will we be a strong nation in the future when up to 20% of our future work force will have been malnourished in childhood?” asked the Rev. Davida Foy Crabtree of the United Church of Christ.

The leaders said Gingrich’s plan to rely more on private resources and charities to pick up the slack after the cuts will not work. The Rt. Rev. Frederick H. Borsch, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, told the crowd: “I’ve been out in the streets and the charities just can’t do it (feed the hungry) all by themselves.”