Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for yielding me time, and I rise in support of H.R. 3102. Madam Speaker, I'd like to explain my position with this bit of a narrative. When I came into this Congress a little over a decade ago, I was watching the growth in the nutrition program, the food stamp program--and I'm well aware that it was established to try to put an end to malnutrition in America. Now, it was growing too fast for me at that time. At that time there were 19 million Americans that were on the food stamp program. By 2008, there were then 28.2 million Americans on the program. The cost in 2003 was about $25 billion. The cost in 2008 was $37.6 billion. Today, our number is knocking on the door of 47 million people. From 19 million to 47 million people, from $25 billion to $78.4 billion, and we're watching an administration that has been advancing the expansion of the signup of the nutrition program by spending millions of dollars in advertising to get more people to sign up, and hiring people to go out and recruit people to sign up for more food stamps. I listened to the testimony before the committee that we had from La Raza that said that food insecurity is now a reason for obesity in America; that people have insecurity about where some of their future meals might come from. Therefore, they tend to overeat when they do get food. And we can help solve this obesity problem by giving an unlimited supply of food stamps, the EBT benefits, to people. Then we will somehow get thinner.…”