Mark Takano: “Thank you, Congressman Honda. I know that before you became a Member of Congress, you had experience as a county…”

“Thank you, Congressman Honda. I know that before you became a Member of Congress, you had experience as a county supervisor, and I know that counties are often the fiscal agents for major programs, like our nutrition programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition programs. I understand that the stimulus funds that we are supplementing, some of these assistance programs--let me try to translate this into ordinary everyday language. We are talking about food stamps. We are talking about people being able to buy food in order to have the basic necessity of eating. I don't know about your district, but in my district, I know that during the height of the recession, we saw people who were middle class families for the first time having to access these programs. As I say, we are still not fully out of this recession. It is a fragile recovery. The other effect that these assistance programs had is that they serve as a kind of stimulus to the local economy. People on these assistance programs have to spend the money locally, at local supermarkets. It injects some stimulus effect on the local economies. My understanding is that, come November 1, we are going to see a significant reduction in those programs because we have not been attending to reauthorizing the legislation that funds these programs. We have grave doubt as to what is going to happen to the 47 million people who rely on SNAP.”