The Honorable Bob Goodlatte
Chairman
House Committee on Agriculture
1301 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We are writing to encourage you to do everything in your power to protect the nutrition assistance programs under your committee's jurisdiction from actions in the budget reconciliation process that will add to the already millions of needy people that are hungry or food insecure. We recognize that the Committee on Agriculture has been instructed to reduce $3 billion in mandatory spending under its jurisdiction, but we strongly encourage you and your colleagues to be mindful of the impact of nutrition cuts on the most vulnerable in our communities and to keep any reductions in such assistance as close to zero as possible.

According to the most recent federal government measurement of food insecurity and hunger, 36.3 million people in our nation, including 13.3 million children, live in households that experience food insecurity. That represents 11.2 percent of all U.S. households, including 17.6 percent of households with children in rural America. These numbers are increasing nationwide and attempts to cut back the nutrition safety net for these families will make the situation worse.

It has come to our attention that a June 3, 2005 communication from an outside group to the committee recommended upwards of $1.7 billion in nutrition assistance cuts, based on a notion of "proportionality" arising from the percentage of 2006-2010 spending in nutrition programs. The tables circulated suggested that such proportionality would be a "fair" way to make the necessary cuts. Nothing is further from the truth and such notions must be rejected outright. The so called "proportionate" cuts will disproportionately harm low-income people, those who can least afford to bear this national burden.

The Food Stamp Program is our nation's best defense against the hunger that can make it so difficult for many families to achieve self-sufficiency. While more than 36 million people are hungry or at risk of hunger, fewer than 26 million participate in the Food Stamp Program. Further, more than 95 percent of food stamp benefits go to households with incomes below poverty; many of the remaining beneficiaries are near-poor elderly or disabled persons. Now is not the time to be cutting food stamp benefits or restricting eligibility, and certainly not in amounts approaching those suggested as "proportional" in the tables being circulated to the committee.

President Bush in his budget recommended $9 billion in agriculture committee spending reductions over five years, including $600 million in food stamp cuts through eliminating eligibility for approximately 300,000 people, most of whom are in working families with children. Too many low-income people cannot afford to lose even one cent from the already modest food stamp average meal benefit of $1 per person. Nonetheless, it is important to note that of the $9 billion in cuts that President Bush asked for, only 7 percent would come from the Food Stamp Program. In contrast, the June 3rd communication to the committee would take 57 percent of the cuts from food stamps.

As you know, the Food Stamp Program has already been subject to major cuts in deficit-reduction contexts in the 1996 reconciliation and welfare reform legislation. As estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, almost $28 billion was cut from food stamps over six years - more than any other program, and whole categories of persons were suddenly denied eligibility or had access to the program reduced. Only about one-third of these cuts have been restored.

During the 2002 farm bill deliberations, important changes were made to a wide variety of programs under your committee's jurisdiction. The 2002 farm bill was by all accounts a success in nutrition assistance, agriculture and conservation policy; and something that our organizations have fought to protect during the current budget process. The 2002 farm bill provided an estimated $80.1 billion in new mandatory spending over 10 years, of which approximately $7 billion was nutrition assistance spending. Nutrition programs at that time accounted for just over half of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) budget, but the new funding for nutrition programs comprised only 8.8 percent of the new spending. Clearly, farm bill policymakers did not use a notion of "proportionality" then to guide the process and should not do so now.

Attempts to cut the Food Stamp Program in the reconciliation process will be disproportionately felt in rural communities, and not just by rural food stamp recipients. USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that each $1 of food stamp benefits generates nearly twice that in economic activity. In the rural context, among other things this means each $1 billion of retail demand created by food stamps generates $340 million in farm production and $110 million in farm value-added, as well as 3,300 added on-farm jobs.

Finally, when the next farm bill comes up in 2007, we believe it is in the interests of all the constituent groups involved - agriculture, nutrition, and conservation - that a strong coalition of support from urban and rural America, from the well-to-do and the poor, from the farm sector and off the farm be marshaled to ensure that the best possible farm bill is enacted. To take substantial reconciliation spending cuts in agriculture from the nutrition assistance programs will erode this coalition and make it more difficult to pass future farm bills. This is even more true in the context of an overall committee target so much smaller than the President's original proposals.

We strongly and respectfully encourage you and your colleagues to protect nutrition programs from actions that will harm the programs and their beneficiaries.

Thank you for your consideration of our views. We encourage you to call upon us if our organizations or membership can be of assistance with the difficult challenges that lie ahead, both with the reconciliation legislation and the future farm bill.

Sincerely,

Robert Forney
President and CEO
America's Second Harvest-The Nation's Food Bank Network

Robert Greenstein
Executive Director
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Jim Weill
President
Food Research and Action Center