Food security advocates fighting aid cutbacks in H.R. 1
February 17, 2011 | 06:46 PM | Filed in: Food aid
By JERRY HAGSTROM
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., has urged food aid advocates to insist that members of Congress not vote to cut international food aid, as the House Republican bill to finance the government through September 30 would do.
McGovern is co-chair of both the Congressional Hunger Center and the House Hunger Caucus.
“They need not to be a cheap date when they talk to their congressman," McGovern said in an interview Wednesday after a speech at a Meridian House International dinner on global food security. “[They’ve] got to be tough.”
McGovern was referring to a provision in House Resolution 1 that includes a 41 percent cut to P.L. 480 Title II (from $1.69 billion to $1.003 billion), a 52 percent cut to the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program (from $209.5 million to $100 million), and a 50 percent cut in International Disaster Assistance (from $860.7 million to $429.7 million), which provides cash to meet emergency food needs.
As the bill moves through the House this week, Obama administration officials and humanitarian groups have been lobbying against it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told appropriators in a letter that the proposed cuts would devastate national security, make the country unable to respond to disasters, and damage U.S. leadership around the world.
“In Iraq, the committees’ proposed cuts occur at exactly the most sensitive juncture as we transition from military-lead to civilian-run programs and operations,” Clinton wrote. “In Afghanistan, our diplomats and development experts are working in lock-step with our service-members, and are essential to our overall success,” she said, noting that the proposed cuts would force Middle East efforts to be scaled back “at this particularly crucial time.”
Clinton also said the cuts would impair border security programs; food, global health, and climate change initiatives; and economic development and trade promotion, which she said have helped expand markets and create jobs in the United States.
Rick Leach of Friends of the World Food Program USA, a group that encourages support for the U.N. World Food Programme, said the cuts would eliminate feeding programs for about 18 million of the world’s poorest and hungriest people, including 15 million people suffering from hunger due to natural disasters and conflicts and 2.5 million children who get school meals through the McGovern-Dole program.
A letter sent out by a coalition of humanitarian groups has resulted in 15,000 messages sent to members of Congress this week, Leach said.
However, there is no evidence so far that House Republicans plan to change the provision. A vote on the final bill is expected by today or Friday, and the Republican majority is expected to support it.
The Senate is unlikely to agree with the House resolution, but McGovern said the food aid cut in the House bill is so deep he fears the Senate will be able only “to make this awful bill a little less awful.”
The Alliance for Global Food Security, a coalition of humanitarian and agriculture groups, has also criticized the proposal. But when 32 farm groups sent a letter to Congress protesting cuts in agriculture programs Wednesday, they declined to be specific about the cuts. One farm lobbyist said the groups sent a short letter because they did not want to deal with mandatory and discretionary programs in the same letter, and that a statement on food aid specifically was also eliminated as the letter sought approval from all 32 groups.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Wednesday that increased food prices have pushed an additional 44 million people into poverty, and that the bank has begun to monitor food needs in developing countries, World Food Program USA noted.
The coalition that asked Congress to reconsider the food aid cuts included the Alliance to End Hunger, Bread for the World, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Congressional Hunger Center, Mercy Corps, Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, World Food Program USA and World Vision.
“Hunger is a political condition,” McGovern said at the Meridian House International dinner. “We have the money, the food, everything but the political will.”
He also urged President Obama to hold a White House conference on hunger. McGovern said he is worried Obama will not meet his goal of ending childhood hunger in the United States by 2015.
Also at the dinner, William Garvelink, deputy coordinator of the Obama Administration's Feed the Future program, said the initiative for agricultural development in poor countries is winning friends among critics of the United States. The program is another that would lose funding under the budget plan.
Joel Berg of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, an advocate for domestic feeding programs, said, “They should make billionaires pay their taxes before they cut these programs.”
Fahah Al-Attiya, chairman of the Qatar National Food Security Program, said his group is working with USAID on a plan to improve agricultural production in dryland countries. Qatar has founded a Global Dryland Alliance, composed of countries concerned with their access to food.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., has urged food aid advocates to insist that members of Congress not vote to cut international food aid, as the House Republican bill to finance the government through September 30 would do.
McGovern is co-chair of both the Congressional Hunger Center and the House Hunger Caucus.
“They need not to be a cheap date when they talk to their congressman," McGovern said in an interview Wednesday after a speech at a Meridian House International dinner on global food security. “[They’ve] got to be tough.”
McGovern was referring to a provision in House Resolution 1 that includes a 41 percent cut to P.L. 480 Title II (from $1.69 billion to $1.003 billion), a 52 percent cut to the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program (from $209.5 million to $100 million), and a 50 percent cut in International Disaster Assistance (from $860.7 million to $429.7 million), which provides cash to meet emergency food needs.
As the bill moves through the House this week, Obama administration officials and humanitarian groups have been lobbying against it.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told appropriators in a letter that the proposed cuts would devastate national security, make the country unable to respond to disasters, and damage U.S. leadership around the world.
“In Iraq, the committees’ proposed cuts occur at exactly the most sensitive juncture as we transition from military-lead to civilian-run programs and operations,” Clinton wrote. “In Afghanistan, our diplomats and development experts are working in lock-step with our service-members, and are essential to our overall success,” she said, noting that the proposed cuts would force Middle East efforts to be scaled back “at this particularly crucial time.”
Clinton also said the cuts would impair border security programs; food, global health, and climate change initiatives; and economic development and trade promotion, which she said have helped expand markets and create jobs in the United States.
Rick Leach of Friends of the World Food Program USA, a group that encourages support for the U.N. World Food Programme, said the cuts would eliminate feeding programs for about 18 million of the world’s poorest and hungriest people, including 15 million people suffering from hunger due to natural disasters and conflicts and 2.5 million children who get school meals through the McGovern-Dole program.
A letter sent out by a coalition of humanitarian groups has resulted in 15,000 messages sent to members of Congress this week, Leach said.
However, there is no evidence so far that House Republicans plan to change the provision. A vote on the final bill is expected by today or Friday, and the Republican majority is expected to support it.
The Senate is unlikely to agree with the House resolution, but McGovern said the food aid cut in the House bill is so deep he fears the Senate will be able only “to make this awful bill a little less awful.”
The Alliance for Global Food Security, a coalition of humanitarian and agriculture groups, has also criticized the proposal. But when 32 farm groups sent a letter to Congress protesting cuts in agriculture programs Wednesday, they declined to be specific about the cuts. One farm lobbyist said the groups sent a short letter because they did not want to deal with mandatory and discretionary programs in the same letter, and that a statement on food aid specifically was also eliminated as the letter sought approval from all 32 groups.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Wednesday that increased food prices have pushed an additional 44 million people into poverty, and that the bank has begun to monitor food needs in developing countries, World Food Program USA noted.
The coalition that asked Congress to reconsider the food aid cuts included the Alliance to End Hunger, Bread for the World, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Congressional Hunger Center, Mercy Corps, Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, World Food Program USA and World Vision.
“Hunger is a political condition,” McGovern said at the Meridian House International dinner. “We have the money, the food, everything but the political will.”
He also urged President Obama to hold a White House conference on hunger. McGovern said he is worried Obama will not meet his goal of ending childhood hunger in the United States by 2015.
Also at the dinner, William Garvelink, deputy coordinator of the Obama Administration's Feed the Future program, said the initiative for agricultural development in poor countries is winning friends among critics of the United States. The program is another that would lose funding under the budget plan.
Joel Berg of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, an advocate for domestic feeding programs, said, “They should make billionaires pay their taxes before they cut these programs.”
Fahah Al-Attiya, chairman of the Qatar National Food Security Program, said his group is working with USAID on a plan to improve agricultural production in dryland countries. Qatar has founded a Global Dryland Alliance, composed of countries concerned with their access to food.
