Statement by Senators John McCain on Introducing the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act of 2015

Statement

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) submitted the following statement today to the Congressional Record on introducing the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act of 2015:

"I am proud to be an original cosponsor of the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Act of 2015, which was introduced today by Senator Patrick Leahy and cosponsored by Senators Bob Casey, Thad Cochran, Debbie Stabenow, and Roy Blunt.

"This bipartisan bill would benefit food banks and hunger charities around the nation. At its core, the bill would provide tax incentives for small and medium business who donate food or resources to food banks. This means restaurants, farms, and other food providers can do even more in their local communities to help fight hunger.

"Speaking for my state, I can tell you that hunger is a very real problem in Arizona. Currently about one in five Arizonans live below the poverty line. In some parts of the state, one-in-four children and one-in-seven seniors live in poverty--particularly on Indian reservations where unemployment rates approach 75 percent, and in minority communities. Often these individuals are left to wonder where their next meal will come from.

"I am proud that Phoenix, Arizona is home to the world's first food bank, the St. Mary's Food Bank. Since its founding in 1967, St. Mary's has grown into a leading hunger organization and has distributed more than 700 million pounds of food to people all over Arizona.

"I believe this bill's projected cost to the Treasury can be offset by reducing unnecessary and wasteful agriculture subsidies. I would encourage my colleagues to look at the most recent Farm Bill that was signed into law in 2013 and is projected to cost over $996 billion dollars over the next ten years. It is fraught with special interest farm subsidies that we could instead reduce or terminate and use the savings to pay for the important tax incentive programs provided by this bill.

"For example, the Farm Bill includes crop insurance subsidies for tobacco products, which are estimated to cost taxpayers $33 million each year. It also provides for the USDA Market Access Program, which has long been criticized by taxpayer watchdogs as a form of corporate welfare because it spends roughly $200 million annually to subsidize advertising, market research and trade shows for large corporations overseas. The Farm Bill also includes an obscure set of USDA grants that subsidizes scientific research for large agriculture operations, such as $25 million earmarked for the study of the health benefits of lima beans and peas, and $1.3 million set-aside for genome sequencing of Christmas trees. Further, it calls for the creation of a USDA Catfish Office, which I have long criticized along with the Government Accountability Office and the Obama Administration for being wasteful and duplicative of FDA's catfish inspection program and will ultimately cost the American taxpayer $14 million a year. These are just a few of the many wasteful Farm Bill programs that could be eliminated to offset the estimated costs of our proposed tax incentive legislation.

"I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation and consider these and other Farm Bill spending offsets as the bill moves through the legislative process."

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