WE STILL HAVE BREAD LINES BUT NOW WE CALL THEM FOOD PANTRIES. AND THEY ARE WAY TOO BUSY

February 18, 2009

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)Copyright 2009 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

February 18, 2009

Section: EDITORIAL

WE STILL HAVE BREAD LINESBUT NOW WE CALL THEM FOOD PANTRIES. AND THEY ARE WAY TOO BUSY

Suzanne McDevitt

One recent evening I was in the kitchen doing dishes, listening to NPR, when I heard Martin Feldstein talking about the recession. He's the Harvard economist who was head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan. In today's recession, he said, "We won't have bread lines."

I was so surprised that I turned to face the radio, hands dripping water on the floor. What country is he living in? What does he think a food pantry is?

Food assistance in the United States includes school lunches, food stamps and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. But food pantries are the first line of relief because they immediately supply anyone who comes in the door if they are income-eligible. For many, food banks are the only supplemental source of food because the food-stamp program has many exclusions.

Food stamps first were used in the 1930s but only on a limited basis. The equivalent of food pantries predominated during the Depression, even though many New Dealers were not fond of them. Harry Hopkins, a close aide to President Franklin Roosevelt on the development of New Deal relief and work programs, once said that they supply only what they "thought was good for [people] or what they could afford to buy ..." Hopkins bemoaned the lack of dignity for recipients: "This was the man who had, in his good days, gone into the grocers, put his dollar on the counter and took what he wanted."

Modern food pantries began in the wake of the Reagan recession in the early 1980s. And they have never left. They continue to be needed because the purchasing power of the take-home pay provided by the minimum wage and low-wage jobs has failed to keep pace with the cost of living.

At this point, food pantries have become so much a part of the landscape that most people seem to have forgotten what they were intended to be: temporary solutions to an acute period of need. Now they are permanent fixtures of our social safety net.

Hundreds of thousands of families across the country depend on food pantries for part of their daily bread every week. In this respect the country has never recovered from the Reagan recession, and every day many people fall further and further behind.

Social science research has established that two-thirds of Americans turn to a means-tested government program at least once between the ages of 20 and 65, but the fragility of our self-sufficiency does not seem to have sunk into the consciousness of many lawmakers.

Food stamps are insufficient to end hunger for reasons too numerous and technical to go into here, but they do extend the amount of food available to income-eligible families and take the pressure off food pantries, which are increasingly inundated.

Food stamps also do more to stimulate the economy because much of the food distributed by pantries is purchased in the wholesale market, leaving out the retailer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that $1 of food stamps produces $1.84 in economic activity.

This is among the reasons the food-stamp provisions in the stimulus plan approved by Congress last week were so important. They will suspend eligibility time limits on unemployed childless adults for 18 months and they will increase the amount of the food-stamp benefit by 13.6 percent as of April 1.

The stimulus also includes $150 million over two years for food pantries, with $50 million dedicated to transportation. Unfortunately, this comes to an average of only $1.5 million a year for each state, a wholly inadequate amount. In Pennsylvania alone last year, the state government provided $18 million to supply food for distribution by pantries.

The Center for Rural Pennsylvania last winter released a study that Beth Osborne Daponte and I conducted on rural food pantries. (It is available at www.ruralpa.org). We found that rural pantries, staffed largely by volunteers, were essential to their communities. When we asked, "What would your clients do if you went out of business?" one third of the food-pantry operators said, "Go hungry." Some said, "Starve."

After that study was released, I received a letter from the director of the Sullivan County food pantry. She provided statistics for the previous five years, 2002 through 2007. During that time her caseload had increased by almost 50 percent. She noted that in January/February 2008, she had to increase the amount of food distributed by more than 50 percent over the same period in 2007.

Let us hope that the stimulus bill's increased funding of food stamps will help take some of the burden off food pantries. But with unemployment rising and the already jobless out of work for longer and longer periods, the burden will remain a heavy one. And food pantries will remain the first line of defense.

Pennsylvania residents can apply online for food stamps at www.humanservices.state.pa.us.

---- INDEX REFERENCES ----
COMPANY: PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL MUTUAL CASUALTY INSURANCE CO; US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE; PENNSYLVANIA AND SOUTHERN GAS CO

NEWS SUBJECT: (Social Issues (1SO05); Social Welfare (1SO83); Health, Education & Welfare (1HE31))

REGION: (North America (1NO39); Americas (1AM92); USA (1US73); Pennsylvania (1PE71))

Language: EN

OTHER INDEXING: (CONGRESS; EDINBORO UNIVERSITY; LINES; NPR; PENNSYLVANIA; RURAL PENNSYLVANIA; SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION PROGRAM; US DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE) (Beth Osborne Daponte; Franklin Roosevelt; Harry Hopkins; Harvard; Hopkins; Reagan; Ronald Reagan; Suzanne McDevitt)

EDITION: SOONER

Word Count: 1005
2/18/09 PITTSPOST B5
END OF DOCUMENT

(C) 2009 Thomson Reuters. No Claim to Orig. US Gov. Works.

February 18, 2009

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