Hunger Games

Trey Smith

For the past two weeks Americans have been treated to the choreographed spectacles known as the Republican and Democratic Party Conventions. At these relics of bygone days, party stalwarts and their chosen presidential candidates whip up enthusiasm by telling the party faithful all the great things they will do if their guy is elected president. The way they tell it one would think they can move mountains!

But after the election ends and much of the campaign rhetoric is cast aside, these same folks don't legislate half as well as they talk! One of the key issues during 2008 was the growing number of Americans sinking into poverty. Despite all the lofty and flowery campaign pledges, neither the president nor the Congress has done much of anything to staunch the number of people being added to the poverty rolls.

As Reuters reported earlier this week,

The number of poor Americans who repeatedly ran short of food shot up by 800,000 in 2011 to nearly 17 million compared with 2010, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.

The Department of Agriculture said in a report that about 5.5 percent of Americans, or nearly 17 million, suffered "very low food security" last year, meaning they had to skip meals or not eat for a day because of a lack of money to buy food. That is a rise of 800,000 over the prior year, it said.

The food-security report was released one day after the government said that a record 46.7 million Americans were enrolled for food stamps in June, up by 173,000 in May.

Just for fun, I took a look at the Congressional record for last year to see what our elected officials did in terms of our various supplemental food programs. For one thing, I didn't find very much. There were only two bills that directly addressed the situation and one was a continued authorization of the first.

With so many Americans facing food security issues, do you think Congress increased or at least held firm on the budgets of supplementary food programs? Hell NO! They lopped money from those very budgets.

If you don't understand the import here, let me explain it to you. At a time when a record number of Americans are going hungry, Congress reduced the amount of funds appropriated to fight hunger...and the president signed the bill into law!

When it comes to the poor, all the glorious campaign rhetoric in 2008 didn't amount to a hill of beans. So, my advice to you -- especially if you are one of the millions of poor people -- is don't allow yourself to be fooled by the campaign rhetoric of 2012.