Let Them Eat Cake

Each day 150 people wait patiently in a large room at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew on Manhattan's Upper West Side. When their names are called, they step into the food pantry operated by the West Side Campaign Against Hunger and choose their monthly allotment of canned goods, pasta, cereals and maybe meat and fresh vegetables--enough for three days' worth of meals. This pantry is better stocked than most. Even so, on the day I visited, there was no milk for the many families with young children who had come for help. Since my last visit two years ago, the Human Resources Administration says that demand for emergency food earlier this year had increased 17 percent in New York City, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that food prices there have risen nearly 5 percent over the past year, boosted primarily by higher prices for fresh fruits and milk [see Lieberman, "Hungry in America," August 18, 2003].

Given food price inflation, it's easy to see why the pantry's clients struggle to put food on the table. One-fourth of them double up with other families in cramped living quarters. One-third are school-age children. Half are either working or receive Social Security benefits. The other half, says pantry director Doreen Wohl, "desperately want work. The first thing they ask is, Can you find me a job?" New York is no different from other cities. The 50,000 food pantries and soup kitchens affiliated with America's Second Harvest, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization, have observed an increased need for food that parallels the rise in poverty. In 2001 there were nearly 33 million people living below the poverty line; by 2003 there were almost 36 million. In the past two years, America's Second Harvest has increased its food distribution by 200,000 pounds, to nearly 2 billion pounds annually.

Despite the limitations of emergency food programs, which range from rationing because grocery supplies are sometimes scarce to lack of choice and availability of nutritious options, more Americans will come to depend on Second Harvest if Congress goes along with a major assault on the nation's food and nutrition programs launched by the President in this year's budget. Its casualties, however, won't become obvious until long after George W. Bush leaves the White House. Although some programs appear to be adequately funded for the next fiscal year, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out that for the first time since 1989 an Administration budget has not provided information about proposed funding levels for individual discretionary programs beyond the coming year. "They've hidden how they are proposing deep cuts that will grow over time," says center senior policy analyst Dottie Rosenbaum.

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