Melder's Musings

This is the day before Thanksgiving, and many Americans are making final preparations for what will be their largest meal of the year. It’s a meal that often makes it easy to forget the struggles of those without food, and your Republican government wants to make that even easier.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) says they have eliminated hunger in the United States…at least on paper.

It’s not that the USDA has actually solved the problem of people who can’t afford food, it’s that the USDA is changing the language. In a move that comes right out of Orwell’s “Ministry of Plenty,” the USDA will now label formerly hungry people as having “low food security.”

As reported by the Washington Post, all of this comes as part of the USDA’s annual review.

“Every year, the Agriculture Department issues a report that measures Americans’ access to food, and it has consistently used the word ‘hunger’ to describe those who can least afford to put food on the table. But not this year.”

“Mark Nord, the lead author of the report, said ‘hungry’ is ‘not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey.’ Nord, a USDA sociologist, said, ‘We don’t have a measure of that condition.’”

Meanwhile, and as the folks at the USDA tinker with words, they are failing in their mission to actually eliminate hunger. As the Post reports, “the USDA said that 12 percent of Americans — 35 million people — could not put food on the table at least part of last year. Eleven million of them reported going hungry at times. Beginning this year, the USDA has determined ‘very low food security’ to be a more scientifically palatable description for that group.”

“The United States has set a goal of reducing the proportion of food-insecure households to 6 percent or less by 2010, or half the 1995 level, but it is proving difficult. The number of hungriest Americans has risen over the past five years. Last year, the total share of food-insecure households stood at 11 percent.”

Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise when we consider who’s running Washington (at least until January). This is the same Republican Congress that slashed food assistance programs last year. According to KDFW-TV in Dallas, they’re looking to do it again this year on their way out of town. Even the USDA report that has brought all of this to light was conveniently released last week — after the midterm elections. It’s normally released in October.

Republicans just don’t get it. If they do get it, then they just don’t care. This is the same party, after all, led by the same George W. Bush who said he thought the USDA report was fabricated. That thinking may have something to do with the report’s finding that his home state is one of the hungriest in the nation.

“I’m sure there are some people in my state who are hungry,” Bush said. “I don’t believe 5 percent are hungry.”

Bush’s callous attitude toward this issue is matched by the crass public face put on it by Senator John Cornyn. The junior senator from Texas spent a few minutes in front of TV cameras yesterday packing boxes at a north Texas food bank. That way, when Texans sat down to watch their local news last night, they saw pictures of him helping feed people while an anchor read about Republican efforts to further starve them.

In spite of GOP efforts to manage the message, however, a new survey shows that most Americans still understand the problem.

“A majority of Americans believe that the hunger problem in the United States is increasing and that it already is as bad or worse than in other developed countries, according to The Hormel Hunger Survey: A National Perspective, which was conducted by Hormel Foods Corporation in conjunction with America’s Second Harvest –- The Nation’s Food Bank Network.”

So, as you sit down to your massive meal tomorrow, try and remember those with “low food security.” As you enter the voting booth in future Novembers, remember those who work to keep it that way.