Members of an informal House task force on hunger release their “114th Congress Guide to Hunger and Federal Nutrition Programs,” a list of resources for colleagues in the Capitol. From left are Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and an informal task force of House Democrats today released a resource guide to hunger issues that they say they hope will convince their Republican colleagues to take hunger more seriously.

DeLauro said that 49 million Americans, 16 percent of the population, are food insecure and that the guide she and her colleagues prepared includes data on states and individual congressional districts in an attempt to force Republican members to come to terms with hunger in their districts and nationwide.

DeLauro, House Agriculture ranking member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Sam Farr, D-Conn., Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., presented the guide in binder form at a news conference, and DeLauro’s staff later emailed copies of it to reporters.

DeLauro said all members of Congress have received it in the last month.

At a highly partisan news conference, DeLauro said she is frustrated that the 2014 farm bill broke the link between the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the energy assistance program, resulting in benefit reductions. She also said Republican members are still talking about more cuts, while unwilling to place any more scrutiny on the crop insurance program.

DeLauro noted that at a markup last week, she could not get any Republican votes for a study of fraud and abuse in the crop insurance program, even though SNAP has a payment error rate of 2.8 percent while the crop insurance error rate is 4 to 5 percent.

McGovern, speaking of the guide, said that “The point of it all is to raise awareness so my colleagues have no excuse not to know what is going on in their districts. This will provide information so they can’t plead ignorance on this issue. Maybe this will help shame them.”

Farr said, “Republicans hate big government until it comes to the administration of antipoverty programs.”

Republicans want government to make sure only qualified people get food stamps, he said, “but when it comes to monitoring Wall Street, they won’t hire people for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.”

“The problem with the Republicans, frankly, is that they don’t understand poverty and how you work yourself out of it, how you have to teach and help and empower people,” Farr added.

Lee said she hopes her Republican colleagues “keep this hunger guide, read it and look at it before they vote.”

She noted that she had been a food stamp beneficiary when she was young and the single mother of two boys. Lee said she considered the program to be “a bridge over troubled water.”

Schakowsky said the idea Republicans offer that people use nutrition programs as “a hammock to relax in is they don’t have to work is so shameful and so unacceptable.”

After a House Agriculture Committee hearing on SNAP today, McGovern told The Hagstrom Report, “I hope they won’t do anything until we take back the House.”

• 114th Congress Guide to Hunger and Federal Nutrition Programs