Hunger In ObamAmerica
Hasn’t been this much hunger since the Clinton years
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who lacked reliable access to sufficient food shot up last year to its highest point since the government began surveying in 1995, the Agriculture Department reported on Monday.
In its annual report on hunger, the department said that 17 million American households, or 14.6 percent of the total, “had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year.” That was an increase from 13 million households, or 11.1 percent, the previous year.
The results provided a more human sense of the costs of a recession that has officially ended but continues to take a daily toll on households; it describes the plight not of a faceless General Motors or A.I.G. but of families with too little food on their children’s plates.
Indeed, while children are usually shielded from the worst effects of deprivation, many more were affected last year than the year before. The number of households in which both adults and children experienced “very low food security” rose by more than half, to 506,000 in 2008 from 323,000 in 2007, according to the report.
Overall, one-third of all the families that are affected by hunger, or 6.7 million households, were classified as having very low food security, meaning that members of the household had too little to eat or saw their eating habits disrupted during 2008. That was 2 million households more than in 2007.
In a statement, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack emphasized the administration’s efforts to combat hunger by creating jobs, providing job training, extending unemployment benefits and taking other measures. He called hunger “a problem that the American sense of fairness should not tolerate and American ingenuity can overcome.”
Elections have consequences, but it is sad to see them play out on little kids. I hope the parents notice that they voted for Hope ‘N Change and ended up with hunger. Maybe they’ll try something else next round.
And have you noticed that the media is running story after miserable story about the family that can’t afford to buy milk? Remember those stories when Bush was president and unemployment was about 30% lower - or more? Gee, I seem to remember a whole bunch of Obama ads… why even a prime time one hour special… focusing on families having a tough time making it. I wonder if they are doing any better today? Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Barack Hussein Obama. Yeah.
- Aggie