Hungry for Justice
Posted by Michael McKenna on Tuesday, March 29, 2011
“There are cuts that kill and cuts that don’t kill.”
Ritu Sharma, Executive Director of Women Thrive Worldwide, shared that sobering quote yesterday at the kick-off of the HungerFast campaign led by Ambassador Tony Hall of the Alliance to End Hunger and other hunger leaders. Ambassador Hall, Bread for the World President David Beckman, Sojourners President Jim Wallis, and Ms. Sharma, decided to fast in order to call attention to the dire impact that proposed budget cuts will have on programs on which low-income Americans depend. Share Our Strength is joining with 38 other antihunger and antipoverty organizations in support of the HungerFast, which you can read more at www.hungerfast.org. Through the collective action of the members of this movement, we all hope to create a ‘circle of protection’ from these cuts around the most vulnerable members of society. Hopefully, members of Congress will see that their proposals are not only morally reprehensible but economically unsound.
To give you a little context to Ms. Sharma’s quote, she is talking about the 26% cut to poverty-focused foreign aid proposed by the House of Representatives. Items on the chopping block include malaria bed nets and aid to farmers making less than a dollar a day to help them process and market their crops. No aid could mean disease or famine. But it’s the cuts to domestic programs that will also kill. 200,000 thousand low-income preschoolers kicked out of Head Start programs, killing their chances for positive education outcomes. 50% funding cut from community service block grants, killing communities’ ability to deliver key services like emergency food and heating assistance to the poor.
Tax loopholes: 60 minutes reported Sunday that over $60 billion in corporate profits have been stashed in Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxation.
Military spending: H.R. 1 didn’t offer any proposed cuts to the Defense budget and the Obama FY2012 budget actually has the Pentagon budget growing at a faster rate than inflation, according to analysis by the Project for Defense Alternatives.
Agricultural subsidies: The House Agriculture Committee recently sent a letter to the Chairman of the Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, in which those members favored cutting SNAP benefits over direct payments to farmers, even though food stamps help over 43 million Americans make ends meet each month. This is being considered at a time when 1 in 5 U.S. households report not having enough money to afford food, according to new data from FRAC. And food prices are climbing, which means recipients of SNAP benefits can buy less food per dollar.
In comparing the chosen cuts versus the programs left untouched, it’s hard not to think that the poor are not merely being ignored by their elected officials, but rather targeted. Is that the American way? It’s spelled out quite clearly in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’…except in the eyes of the House of Representatives?
March 29, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: budget, government, hunger
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