Jim McGovern

I think that is an area we should be focusing attention on.

I can tell you when we took back that food stamp generosity, when the Recovery Act monies ran out, all of us heard from constituents who complained that food prices didn't go down.

I think of SNAP as providing medicine for people, because I do think food is medicine.

The fact is that the benefit, as Mr. Weill pointed out, is inadequate.

It is a program that is actually run pretty well.

I am all for evidence-based evaluation, but we are talking about a program, in SNAP, that has one of the lowest error rates of any Federal program.

That is one of the reasons why I have been urging the White House to do a White House conference on food, nutrition, and hunger to try to bring everybody who has a role in this together.

I wish, within the Federal Government, all the relevant agencies that deal with issues of hunger and poverty were better coordinated, would meet on a regular basis, and talk about how they can work better together.

SNAP is working, and my hope is that this Committee will look for ways to strengthen it so that we can continue to give families a hand up when they need it.

Improvement is code for cuts. It makes me nervous that we are going down a path that I worry could actually make hunger worse.

I still have a lot of questions as to where all this is headed.

By the way, I am talking about a livable wage.

It infuriates me that, you know--that there are too many workers in this country who earn such abysmally low wages.

I think we should have that discussion. But let's be honest, that is going to require additional resources.

The hard reality is that we can and we must do a better job in fighting hunger and poverty in America.

Our safety net has some holes in it, and it must be strengthened to meet some of our families' most basic needs.

Holding a White House conference like this would be a major step forward in our effort to reduce hunger and poverty.

I think sunshine and transparency are a good thing. So I would hope that Congress would move along the line of greater transparency and giving the American people what they want.

And yet I am reading from the Washington Post Fact Checker that says that people who claim that mandatory labeling is going to cost consumers significantly more in groceries per family per year, earned three Pinocchios.

Quite frankly, I am puzzled by this debate, because I fall on the side of the fact that if a majority of people in this country want there to be GMO labeling so they know what they are buying, then I am for it.

This is an interesting hearing, in the context of something that we are beginning to talk about in this Committee, and in other committees, about the issue of GMO labeling.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Dr. Morris, for being here. I appreciate all the work that you do.

Please tell the people of the United States thank you because in this village, where I can't feed my son...

I am most proud of our international food aid programs.

Can you do something about this?