Providing for Further Consideration of H.R. 1947, Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. MEEKS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.

Let me say, first of all, we used to have--or we have--in the part of the city that I live in, a statement that says, ``Give us your poor, your hungry, your huddled masses yearning to be free.'' We have people here yearning for food.

Now, I have heard my very good friend from Texas talk about rapists and murderers, et cetera, but the Congressional Budget Office, it talks about 200,000 children who will be cut off from the school program. That's not Democrats talking about it. It is the Congressional Budget Office that is talking about it, and we as a country should be focused on the least of these.

I think you judge a country by how you take care of the poor. Here we have clear evidence from an impartial group of about 200,000 children and hundreds of thousands of elderly individuals who will go hungry if we cut this $20.5 billion. This is what this is all about.

We talk about the future of America. Well, somebody within that 200,000 children, who are hungry, who will not have the ability to learn because their stomachs will be crying out for some food, could be the person that could take us where we want to go as a Nation. But what are we doing? In the name of saving money, which we are not, we are turning our backs on these children, on the elderly who have worked hard, many of whom came in with the sign of giving us your young, your poor, and your hungry.

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