What impact will these proposed cuts have on this particular urban area?

Well, for one thing, $4.3 million which now comes into the District of Columbia, for example, in food stamps each month would go down. So less money would go into the local food stores and the economy. And more jobs would be lost.

The local unemployment rate is already above 8 percent.

Should this Congress enact a so-called supplication of benefits change involving school lunch, the households of over 48,000 children in this city would have their food stamps reduced.

Thanks to the combined city-community-religious cooperation over the past year, a badly needed WIC supplemental food program is about to be inaugurated in Washington to help the estimated 20,000 pregnant and lactating women, infants and children who need extra food. Any cuts at all in the WIC budget would jeopardize the lives and health of those most vulnerable residents who are already at risk.

Two of our small Episcopal parishes in nearby Maryland, one urban and one rural, extend a summer ministry to the children of their neighborhoods. The summer food program operates in both places; and these youngsters can eat as well as learn and play together every day. If the summer food program is eliminated as proposed by this administration, the learning and playing will be harder to do on empty stomachs, not only in these parishes but everywhere where summer food programs of this type are implemented. And there are no nearby agencies to pick up the slack. Statistics are easy to brush aside, so let's look at one human example.

Last week, I learned of a woman whose sole income is $326 a month for her family of four. By anyone's definition she is one of the truly needy people. But this woman has three sons who receive free lunches at their school. Should this Congress change the food stamp program to count school lunch benefits as income in determining food stamp benefits, her monthly food stamp allotment would probably drop by as much as one-sixth. And she has no other money to spend on food. Her rent is $225 a month, and utilities eat up the rest of her check.

This is just one example of the fallacy that these proposed cuts would not harm the poorest of the poor. The fact is that they will. Over the course of these hearings you will no doubt hear the same statistics quoted over and over. You will be presented with the same research findings showing improved health and virtual elimination of outright starvation, thanks to food programs in this country. And you will be urged again and again not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, until it perhaps all becomes like a time-worn refrain.

But it all does need to be repeated. It must be repeated so that none of us forget it: While one of the least of our people goes hungry, we all suffer from that same hunger.

When one small child dies from lack of food, a bit of us dies, too. As a Nation, we have the power and the resources to insure that none of our brothers and sisters goes hungry.

I urge you to reconsider making any cuts at all in these programs which nourish hungry people. Instead, I would call on you to

increase the resources of this Nation which are available to the poor and to the helpless so that they too may find it possible to lead healthy and productive and dignified lives.

This is cost effective; this is possible. And this is justice.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, sir.

STATEMENT OF MARY NELSON, DIRECTOR, LUTHERAN FAMILY MISSION, CHICAGO, ILL., REPRESENTING THE LUTHERAN COUNCIL IN THE UNITED STATES

MS. NELSON. My name is Mary Nelson. I am director of Bethel Housing and Lutheran Family Mission. I have lived and worked in a ghetto, low-income community for the last 15 years. I am here representing the Lutheran Church of America, the American Lutheran Church, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, which represent about 6 million Americans. We are here to testify on behalf of the reauthorization of the food stamp program.

We submitted written testimony, so I won't read it to you.1 I simply want to state that we are here as Lutherans and as Christians, sir, out of our commitment and faithful love for the struggle for economic justice, as a statement of what it means to be God's people in this world, in this day and age.

I don't need to repeat the findings of the Field Foundation study, but simply to state that there is indeed still hunger in America. I live and work in a community, as I said, where 43 percent of the people are unemployed. And over the last 15 years, I have seen a major increase in the number of people picking in garbage cans. And that is a sad symbol of the state of affairs in America at this point.

We have a program for senior citizens where we go into their houses and work with them. We have helped a number of them get onto the food stamp program because the forms and access to the offices were difficult. And we found that a number of them were indeed stretching their food budgets by living on dogfood. And if you go and look at the grocery stores in our community, indeed, the number of cans of dogfood being sold has dramatically increased over the last 12 years. There indeed is hunger in America. The Global 2000 report, the Willie Brandt Commission report, and the Presidential Commission on World Hunger say that this problem is not going to decrease. This is a problem that will be with us and will indeed increase, not only in the world, but in America as well.

Our Lutheran churches have made a major response around hunger, not only in gathering funds, but in stimulating the programs of self-help and alternatives to hunger in a number of communities.

In our community, for instance, our hunger alternative, in addition to a pantry, was to put together a food co-op to enable people to try to get food at a cheaper price by sharing in the effort of doing that.

Another community in an urban setting has pulled together a whole group of urban gardens. Part of the funds have gone to

1 See p. 331 for the prepared statement of Ms. Nelson.

enable people to buy seeds and some of the equipment to help grow food at lesser cost.

But the church's response to the hunger needs in our country cannot meet the problem. It is indeed the Government's responsibility, with us simply filling in some of the gaps and holes we see in our everyday life.

The other point we would like to make is about the cuts that are proposed to the food stamp program.

Although there is strong testimony from all of you that you want to support the truly needy, the proposed cuts as we read them will indeed affect the truly needy, and at a time when all of the other cuts will hit them as well. So it will be a compounded impact. We feel this can bring a great deal of misery and agony into a community such as ours. And I fear for what is going to happen. I lived through five riots in 4 years in the 1960's in our community. I saw the frustration and agony of our people; and I fear for what will happen with the compounding impact of the totality of these cuts that are being proposed coming so hard on the backs of poor people.

We want to very specifically talk about a couple of the suggested cuts. We want to simply say that one of them, for instance, freezing the deductions at current levels, would indeed affect the truly needy, and is a cut that would go across the board, and not simply get rid of people who are over the income levels. And as to medical and shelter costs, I don't care how poor you are, Mr. Chairman, they continue to rise. And freezing deductions will be indeed a hardship on the truly needy.

So we would urge that you not make that change.

Second, we would urge that you not repeal the changes scheduled to go into effect in 1982, which affect the method of updating the thrifty food plan.

I have two comments to make on the thrifty food plan.

One is that if anybody has ever had to shop in the ghetto, you know that it costs you more to buy food there than elsewhere. You don't have access to the thrift stores and the discount places. They are way out in the suburbs or in inaccessible places.

Second, the cost of food in the ghetto community is simply higher. And if you are going to freeze the dates at which you calculate this thrifty food plan, even though you don't calculate that it costs higher in the ghetto, that then you are going to make those prices way behind what the actual escalating costs of food are. So we would urge you not to rescind those 1982 regulations. And finally, we would urge you not to include the changes in the gross income eligibility of 130 percent, because indeed that will affect a number of the truly needy. I am thinking particularly of the senior citizens who are living on SSI, on some type of social security and so forth, whose income, if calculated this new way, would make them ineligible for food stamps. And again because of all of the other rising costs they are forced to live with, I don't know how they are going to make it.

So in conclusion, we would urge you to again look back over those recommended cuts. We can go along with the intent to cut out the problem of error, the problems of people getting food stamps who are not eligible for them. But we indeed say particular

ly on the specific issues I mentioned here, that it doesn't make sense to make the truly needy people bear the impact of the greatest cuts.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Next, Rev. Richard Wood.

STATEMENT OF REV. RICHARD WOOD, DIRECTOR, ILLINOIS CONSORTIUM OF GOVERNMENT CONCERNS, SPRINGFIELD, ILL. Reverend WOOD. Thank you.

I am Richard Wood. I am the director of the Illinois Consortium on Governmental Concerns, a coalition composed of 21 regional religious groups who are identified on the heading of our submitted testimony.1

I speak on behalf of the consortium and also my religious collegues across the State, who have shared their concerns with me as they are involved in the direct service poverty programs of the church, particularly the emergency food programs of their congregations and cooperative interfaith organizations.

I join with my colleagues in calling on your full funding of the food stamp program, for many of the reasons that have already been stated. I also want to put their earlier comments in a particular perspective that comes from our experiences in Illinois in the religious community, and particularly out the context of an additional argument that strike at the very heart of the responsibilities you have assumed as our Nation's elected officials.

For it seems to us, as we look at what is happening in Washington, that there is an assumption here that the Federal Government can cut back on its programs because the private sector is quite capable of moving in, filling the void, and doing so in a very comprehensive and complete way. When it comes to poverty and hunger, we have found that along with the charities, it is the religious community that is the "private sector": the people of our churches and synagogues.

And so before you reduce the level of Federal responsibility for the food stamp program, we call upon you to first assess the capabilities of the private sector, to determine if indeed it can fill the void you leave behind.

I would like to share with you the present status of poverty's private sector in Illinois.

I talked with a clergy colleague of mine with the Church Federation of Chicago. He has 53 food pantries in the Chicago area that report to him their food distribution statistics. They have been doing that through 1980, and now into 1981.

During 1980, the 53 pantries distributed food to 115,000 people. But they also turned away 9,000 persons because they didn't have any food.

In January 1981, they served 11,300 people. However, they turned away over 1,000 persons because they ran out of food.

A fellow pastor of mine in Rockford, Ill., tells me that in January 1981, their cooperative citywide pantry served 900 persons, which isn't large compared with the statistics from Chicago, but it is the greatest demand that they have ever faced. And he tells me that if

1 See p. 334 for the prepared statement of Reverend Wood.

Chrysler Corp., a major employer in that area, goes under, a now sobering food future then becomes a frightening future indeed. Further south in the State of Illinois, the coordinator of the Catholic urban program for the Belleville Diocese says that the demand for food began accelerating this summer, and now they just can't keep up. The demand for food from households grew by 41 percent in 1980 over the previous year in the program. He asked me what happens when unemployment compensation runs out. And people are coming to this program now not just from the East St. Louis area, but from surrounding communities as well.

In my own community of Springfield, Ill., in 1980, in our own congregation, 6 months had to pass before our congregation served 200 people. This year, we served that many people in the first 2 months of the year.

And so in Chicago, in Rockford, in St. Clair County, and in Springfield, as the food demand increases, what we are finding is that our religious capacity to respond is decreasing. We are finding fewer people in our congregations who are financially able to stock the shelves because they too are facing an economic crunch.

We are also finding that our food program dollars are buying fewer groceries than a year ago. Therefore, even with the present food stamp program, the religious community, the private sector, is losing ground and cannot keep pace.

If you cut the program back-and I am told that there are proposals to reduce benefits to Illinois citizens by $70 million, which is equal to the cost of 2 months of the program, there is no way that the synagogues, the congregations and parishes in Illinois can make up the difference. And I don't think they should have to make up the difference. We have entrusted our Government with the responsibility for upholding our basic human rights: rights that have here been affirmed by my colleagues. We have come to affirm that one of the rights basic to us all is the right to food.

When the economic instability of our Nation creates hunger and poverty, then it becomes the responsibility of Government to make certain that the food needs of its people are met. You cannot expect the religious community to bear full responsibility for the consequences of a postindustrial society, while Government does little or nothing. And that is seemingly what is happening.

In behalf of the well-being of our society, and the people of our society, the responsibility is yours. We call on you to fully accept this responsibility. A nation and a society that does not recognize the needs of its people suffers as a result.

We are demeaned by such insensitivity. We call on you to fully support the food stamp program because of what it means for poor people and because of what it says about all of us.

Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, sir.

There will be written questions submitted to each of you by members of the committee who are unable to be here today. And I intend to do the same thing. But in the meantime, I want to commend each of you for an eloquent statement. And I assure you we are going to do the best we can. And I do appreciate your testifying before the committee today.

Thank you very much.