National Hunger and Poverty
NATIONAL HUNGER AND POVERTY -- (House of Representatives - November 01, 2005)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address the Department of Agriculture's report that was released last week on national hunger data. My home State of Texas ranks at the bottom of this list with 16 percent of households listed as food insecure. This means that at some point, 16 percent of Texans could not provide enough food for their families. This is a staggering number.
Nationally, we did not do much better. Despite improvements in the economy, the number of households at risk for hunger actually increased. We have heard about the mergers, consolidations, buyouts and all the layoffs. As a matter of fact, higher productivity where you can get half the number of people to do the same job the rest of them did is having its impact.
Hiring illegal aliens for less than minimum wage or minimum wage is having its impact. Those people are looking for a better day for their families. They send the money back to Mexico and that leaves them here without anything to eat. We must address this issue. This means that even though more people are working, many are not making enough money to afford basic necessities, namely, food. A full-time minimum wage worker makes less than $11,000 per year. Can you just imagine some of these CEOs making less than $20 million? They would probably starve. These are not just teenagers flipping hamburgers. Thirty-five percent of those earning minimum wage are their family's sole breadwinner. These working poor are faced with the impossible decision of often having to choose between food, clothing, shelter, medicine and utility bills, gas bills.
America was founded on the idea that everyone who works hard can obtain the American dream. Over the past 5 years, this Congress has abandoned those ideals and intensified poverty. We can do better to help American families. It is unconscionable that every day we are here, we are working to see how we can give a bigger tax cut for the wealthy and how we can take it away from the poor. It does not just affect the poor, it affects all of us. Until we are fair about distribution of some wealth, we will never have fairness returned. We have got to invest to solve these problems. That does not mean throwing money at the problem but it does mean paying people a living wage to live on. When we hear about Southwestern Bell, AT&T, TXU laying off 1,200, 1,400, 1,500 people, it impacts those families. Children have to drop out of college or out of school. Families' houses go up in foreclosure. These are law-abiding, working Americans. Do we care? Our record does not show that we care. We simply must address this issue.
I hear all the statistics about the jobs created. Maybe it is like in New Orleans where every job created is going to an illegal alien. That simply is not fair to the American people and most especially it is not fair to people who were in New Orleans who called it home not being able to get the jobs. We have inherited more than our share of both and we have opened arms to receive them in Texas, but we do need to give attention to whether or not we are really helping. If they cannot eat, if they cannot afford shelter, are we helping?
It is the same thing with our borders. Do we help the people to allow them to come over illegally, get hired by the wealthy for 3 or 4 weeks and then they are without jobs? I think we need to take a second look of how we are distributing wealth in this country. Just because the stock market is doing well for 10 percent of the population, it does not mean that everybody else is doing fine. I have heard so many comments about how great the economy is. These people are not even counted in the economy. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to share this with my colleagues, and I hope we heed this.
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