Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. CONYERS. I would like to follow on to our great whip's very moving statement and ask our good friend Roscoe Bartlett, a distinguished Member from Maryland, whether or not he would pass a bill that would cut funding in the amount of $650 million for women, infant, and children out of the Department of Agriculture's program.

So in the four decades that I have served and have been honored to serve in this Congress, I believe that we will have reached an all-time low today if we pass a bill that will cut funding for the Department of Agriculture's Women, Infants, and Children program.

Ladies and gentlemen, my brothers and sisters, how can anybody in Congress with a conscience seriously consider passing a bill, or even proposing one, that would result in more hunger for hundreds of thousands of the poorest and neediest low-income children across this Nation who are already suffering from hunger and malnutrition?

I fail to understand the logic of any elected official who serves in Congress who would actually support a $650 million cut from the Women, Infants, and Children program during one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression without feeling some kind of moral or ethical guilt for doing so.

The Women, Infants, and Children program serves nearly 10 million people each year and costs less than $100 per person. What could be more important than supporting a Federal program that provides nutritious food to new mothers, babies, and children under 5 who have been identified as nutritionally at risk?

Cutting the Women, Infants, and Children program for poor children and mothers is clearly an abandonment of our family values. Promoting policies that we know will result in scores of children feeling the painful sting of hunger, not being able to focus in school or not being able to do their homework, is far from what I would consider having good family values. It is simply un-American, immoral, heartless, and unconscionable to take food away from the mouths of hungry children in the name of deficit reduction. Ladies and gentlemen, have we no shame?

The majority of Americans do not support slashing vital food and nutrition programs for our Nation's poorest children. Let's get rid of the tax breaks for billionaires so all children in this country can live the American dream and not go to bed hungry at night.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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