Appleseed Humanity

As the melodramatic, stage-managed bun fight that is the debate over the debt limit continues in Congress the full horror of the cuts proposed by some members as a solution is causing concern among people who serve those at risk.

Among the cuts proposed by conservative members is a significant reduction in the funding for ‘WIC’ – a nutritional program for women, infants and children. And the cuts would be inflicted while tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies remain blocked as ‘unfair.’

For years both parties had followed an unspoken tradition to always fund WIC, but early this year the GOP-led House passed a funding bill that would slash $733-million from the program.

If it ever becomes law 300-450,000 women and children would instantly go hungry.

To propose slashing funds for programs like WIC while insisting that tax breaks for billionaires and oil companies are preserved for the good of the nation is not only blatant pandering to those who fund both their lifestyle and election campaigns it’s also unsupported by facts:

Economists say every $1 invested in feeding a pregnant woman through WIC saves up to $2.13 in health care costs over the life of her child. At the same time, just one week of the revenue lost from the tax breaks would fund WIC in full for a year – With a profit.

44.5-million Americans now live beneath the poverty line. One in three are so poor they can’t eat every day. And to propose cutting funds to programs that help those with so little while preserving vote-gaining perks for those with more than enough is callous, deceptive, self-serving malfeasance.

The election cycle is almost upon us. Next time you hear a politician tell you they love this country and truly care about the people, find out where they stand on the funding for WIC.

You might not care about them quite so much when you know.

Source: Half-in-Ten

[Appleseed] – America is a nation of bounty, but a report released on Monday by the US Department of Agriculture proves that bounty is not universally shared.

It reveals that 45-million Americans can’t even afford to eat every day.

Roughly 14-percent of the nation’s homes suffered what the report pompously calls “food insecurity” in 2009, meaning they had difficulty feeding one or more of their members last year.

And the cause was always the same. ‘Lack of financial resources,’ says the report.

In short, poverty. In this nation. In the 21st century.

The report also shares the depressing statistic that this is the highest number of people they have found going hungry since the Federal Government started keeping score of such figures in 1995.

One third of the number – about 6.8-million homes or 5% of the nation’s total of households – suffered ‘Very low food security.’ Which basically means they were close to starvation.

According to the report, the usual response of those who endured such injustice was to eat far less than normal, and sometimes not at all. Single-parent households were worst affected, it says, and the percentage of people who frequently went without food was higher among black and Hispanic homes.

“This report highlights how critical federal nutrition assistance programs are for American families,” USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services Kevin Concannon told CNN in a statement.

And he’s right – Most of those who suffered an unstable diet received some level of benefits from the Government’s three anti-hunger programs: ‘The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,’ the ‘National School Lunch Program’ and the typically long-winded ‘Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children,’ known as WIC.

The ‘Supplemental Nutrition’ program now supports 18-percent more people than it had to just two years ago. The ‘School Lunch’ program and WIC have also seen an increased need of over 5% each.

The mere fact that such numbers could exist in this glorious land in the 21st century should have protesters with banners taking turns lining up at the Capitol steps to protest until it was stopped. Instead, nobody cares.

And people still ask why we bother to do this…

Photo: M. Ihara