On the recordOctober 20, 2011
first of all, I completely agree with Senator Sessions. We need to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the supplemental food program, as in every Federal program. I wish to commend the USDA now for having less than a 4-percent error rate, and we are going to continue to push them to go down even further. Why? Because right now we have people who have paid taxes all their lives, who had never in their wildest dreams thought they would ever need help putting food on their table, and they do. We cannot afford to waste even one dollar. My colleague mentioned on the floor several times a lottery winner in Michigan who got food assistance. He is right, it was outrageous. The State changed it, and we are changing it in the upcoming farm bill. But the reality is that this amendment, the Sessions amendment, completely changes the structure of the food assistance program, putting up barriers to hard-working, honest men, women, and children who need help, most of them for the first time in their entire lives. I urge my colleagues to vote no.
