A Place at the Table Page #5

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We want to thank everyone

as we begin the committee's work

to reauthorize

the Federal Child Nutrition Programs.

Hopefully, we'll be able

to work this out.

I hate to pit agriculture

against nutrition,

would seem to be inconsistent.

The Agriculture Committee is there

to allocate lots of money

to agribusiness,

support and subsidize the prices

of other agriculture products,

and we're very sorry that we're not

going to address fully childhood hunger.

We are voting on yet another bill

that calls for the government to grow,

expand, spend more,

and intrude more.

I can't help but be reminded

of the fact that my friends

on the other side of the aisle

have borrowed countless

billions of dollars

to pay for tax cuts

for millionaires and billionaires.

They have no problem

with doing that.

The critical investment this bill makes

are completely paid for

and will not add 1

to the national debt.

The fact that they call it

the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act

and then, at the same time,

scoop money out

of the food stamp program,

that to me is a paradox.

You can't just, like, push a tiny bit

of mashed potatoes

from one side of the plate

to the other and say,

"Okay, now we have fed you."

It's not a victory.

You're taking money out

of the mouths of poor people,

and, yeah, you're putting it

toward a good cause,

which is child nutrition,

but why are we...

Why are we making this choice?

The great temptation in Washington

is to always take

something away from those

who, frankly,

can't defend themselves.

I think we spent maybe $700 billion

on the banking and insurance bailout,

so $4.5 billion is really just

a fraction of that.

It's kind of symptomatic of how lopsided

things have become in Washington

as a result of special interests

that frankly control a lot

of the Congressional agenda.

As long as we have a system

where corporates

can fund election campaigns,

we're going to have legislators

who are more interested

in corporate health than public health.

It's just appalling.

You know, if another country

was doing this to our kids,

we would be at war.

This is, you know, it's just insane.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

These children,

all of them, are Americans.

And all of them are hungry.

One of the most poignant things

that occurred during the 1960s

to really put hunger

on the national agenda

was a special hour-long documentary

by CBS in 1968.

Here for CBS Reports is Charles Kuralt.

Food is the most basic

of all human needs.

Man can manage to live

without shelter, without clothing,

even without love.

But man can't remain alive

without food.

We're talking

about 10 million Americans.

In this country,

the most basic human need

must become a human right.

It galvanized

public opinion in such a way

that President Nixon and

the Democratic leaders of Congress

decided they had to do something

about hunger at our time.

The moment is at hand

to put an end to hunger

in America itself for all time.

The past ten years now,

the federal government

has spent billions of dollars

fighting hunger in America.

They expanded

the food stamp program

to make it a national program,

they expanded

the elderly feeding programs,

they instituted

a school breakfast program

to go along

with the school lunch program

which had gone back to the 1940s.

It showed that public policy could work.

Political will could work

to make a difference in our country.

Regular Americans rose up

and demanded

that we create a modern

nutrition assistance safety net,

which almost helped us almost

end hunger entirely by the late 1970s.

Joining us

this morning from Washington,

Jeff Bridges, the national spokesman

for Share Our Strength,

and also the group's founder

and executive director Billy Shore.

Welcome to both of you.

Thanks for joining us

this morning.

Good morning, Kyra.

- Thank you.

- Jeff, let me start with you.

You've been passionate

about this for a long time.

I know that you founded

the End Hunger Network back in 1983.

- Mm-hmm.

- Tell us about this new campaign,

the No Kid Hungry campaign

that launches today.

We're in dire straits.

We have 17 million of our children

who are living in homes

with food insecurity.

And I believe no child

in America should go hungry,

and by taking this pledge,

I'm adding my voice

to the national movement

of people who are committed

to end childhood hunger

in America by 2015.

Back in the early '80s,

when I went to a seminar

about ending world hunger,

hunger was pretty much handled

in America.

We had food stamps

and the WIC program

that were really

keeping hunger at bay.

And then these programs started

to be underfunded.

And I figured, well, you know,

it's a little difficult to be telling

some other country

on how to handle hunger

when we're not handling it

ourselves.

We virtually eradicated hunger

in America in the 1970s,

but it's back with a vengeance.

People look back

on the Reagan years,

and particularly during

the recession,

and they saw several things happen.

There were a lot of tax cuts,

so the government's tax base shrunk.

There was a big increase

in defense spending.

And so how is

that going to be made up?

It was made up by cutting the budgets

of a lot of social programs.

So at a time that need was

going up more in the country,

they cut the programs

that made them less.

And what popped out

of that equation?

More hungry people

on the streets.

The '80s created the myth

that A:
Hungry people deserved it,

and B:
Well, we could really

fill in the gaps with charities.

And so we had a proliferation

of emergency responses.

Soup kitchens, food pantries,

moving from literally a shelf

in the cupboard of the pastor's office

to an operation with regular hours.

Something changed

during that period of time.

There developed this ethos

that government was doing too much.

And more importantly,

the private sector's wonderful.

And let's feed people

through charity.

We have basically created

a kind of secondary food system

for the poor in this country.

Millions and millions of Americans,

as many as 50 million Americans,

rely on charitable food programs

for some part of meeting

their basic food needs.

431 and 451 for backpacks

for this week.

Every Wednesday we

go down and get a trailer full of food

from Food Bank of the Rockies.

The problem that we run into

in small towns is that the income level

has gone down,

the jobs are minimal,

the second-

and third-generation people

are having to leave the area

to find work.

Ten years ago or so,

when we started this,

my wife and I had

purchased an old Suburban.

And I remember driving it

to the food bank

and being excited about backing up

and filling that Suburban

with 10 to 15 boxes of food,

and thinking we were really

making a difference in our community.

And after a year and a half,

we bought a little single-axle trailer

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