USAID relief commodities at the Port-au-Prince airport are readied for distribution, Jan. 17, 2010. Credit: Candice Villarreal/U.S. Navy

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 28 2014 (IPS)

Lawmakers here may roll back recent landmark reforms to how the United States provides international food aid, despite warnings that doing so would reduce assistance for some two million people worldwide.

At issue is a longstanding requirement that a portion of that food aid be transported globally on U.S. ships with U.S. crews, a policy aimed at bolstering jobs but which has long been criticised as inefficient in terms of both money and speed of response. For decades 75 percent of aid needed to be moved on U.S.-flagged ships, but in 2012 the U.S. Congress dropped this number to 50 percent, part of a major reform package that humanitarian groups and others lauded.“They’re trying to argue that you can get the best of both worlds, when the truth is this change will literally cost two million people food on the table at night." -- Eric Munoz

Yet a one-line provision in an otherwise unrelated bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month would set this figure again at 75 percent. The Senate is expected to start work in coming weeks on a similar bill, and opposition to the provision is now starting to coalesce among lawmakers, humanitarian groups and the administration of President Barack Obama.

“This absolutely goes against everything Congress and the administration have been trying to do, in terms of being more efficient with government funding,” Ryan Quinn, a senior policy analyst with Bread for the World, an anti-hunger group here, told IPS.

“We’re always talking about the budget crisis and using our money more wisely, but here’s a provision that would specifically raise the cost of food aid by 75 million dollars annually. That money would be taken directly out of U.S. food aid programmes – and millions of vulnerable people would be forced to pay the bill.”

The provision comes in otherwise routine legislation to fund the U.S. Coast Guard. Yet Quinn says the food aid directive, known as Section 318, was slipped into the broader bill with little discussion and no consultations with experts working on international assistance.

Now that the proposal has come to light, however, it has started to receive strong pushback from multiple corners.

“When 842 million people around the world go hungry every day, making every food aid dollar count is both a responsible use of taxpayer money and a moral imperative,” Allan Jury, senior policy advisor at World Food Program USA, a group that supports the U.N. agency and opposes Section 318, told IPS in a statement.

“U.S. food aid saves millions of lives each year. Therefore, we urge Congress to reject any actions that increase transportation costs for food aid and prevent hungry people around the world from receiving U.S. food assistance.”

The Obama administration, which had supported stronger reforms to U.S. food aid than ultimately became law in 2012, has likewise been adamant in its opposition to the new proposal. The Department of Homeland Security has written a letter to the Senate “strongly” opposing Section 318, warning that it would have “grave effects on United States humanitarian assistance programs”.

Rajiv Shah, the head of USAID, the federal agency in charge of most of the country’s foreign assistance, has likewise urged lawmakers to dump Section 318. In the past, the agency has pointed to research finding that previous U.S. food aid policies increased the time required to respond to a humanitarian crisis by up to 14 weeks, compared to simply purchasing supplies locally.

Ending reimbursements

The current debate is particularly important given that the United States is one of the world’s most important contributors of food aid, doling out some two billion dollars in assistance during the past fiscal year. Yet it’s also the only major donor country to continue to mandate transport requirements for that aid.

Lobbyists in favour of Section 318 have not been particularly public about their support, though it is clear the shipping industry and certain labour groups have pushed for the change. In addition, Duncan Hunter, the Republican lawmaker who pushed the provision, has suggested that his primary concern has to do with “military readiness” – ensuring that a sound fleet of private seagoing vessels is available in time of need.

Yet advocates who have urged food aid reform for years say the House’s approval of the bill doesn’t mean lawmakers necessarily support Section 318. Some say the quietness with which action was taken on the provision could have confused some in the House over the impact of the shipping change – a situation they’re hoping to prevent as the issue moves to the Senate.

“I think [lawmakers] are confusing a desire to support U.S.-flagged vessels with a programme that is fundamentally about assistance and reaching people in need,” Eric Munoz, a senior policy advisor with Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, told IPS.

“They’re trying to argue that you can get the best of both worlds, when the truth is this change will literally cost two million people food on the table at night – and at what benefit is not clear. We are now highlighting for members of Congress that this is not just an administrative change but one that will hamper our ability to reach people in places where this assistance is desperately needed.”

Further, the impact of the new change would likely be even more significant than in the past. Previously the federal government specifically tried to offset transport costs by reimbursing USAID and other federal agencies for the higher price of using U.S.-flagged ships.

Yet budget-related wrangling over the past year has ended these reimbursements entirely, amounting to some 731 million dollars over the next decade. This means that higher financial outlays incurred due to U.S. labour costs and regulations will be borne solely by the food programmes – and their intended recipients.

In its recent letter, the Department of Homeland Security warned that the combined effects of the new provision and the reimbursements ending “reduces that number of people – again mostly those in crises – who can be fed annually by 4 million.”

There is no public schedule yet for when the Senate may start work on its own Coast Guard reauthorisation bill, or whether a provision similar to Section 318 would be included. It’s likely, however, that the Senate will take up the issue in June.

Homeless people in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in Washington DC, waiting for shuttles that will take them to food shelters. Credit: Ramy Srour/IPS

By Ramy Srour
WASHINGTON, Oct 17 2013 (IPS)

Near the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown Washington, just a few blocks away from the federal district, dozens of homeless men and women wait for the evening shuttles that will take them to their dinners at one of many food shelters around the city.

They can get by during the day with the few dimes and quarters spared by passersby, but the only daily meal they can really count on is the one they will get at the local food shelter, and so for them, hunger is a very real problem.

Two weeks before federal legislation that will cut funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, goes into effect on Nov. 1,  thousands of families around the country wonder how they will put food on the  table, while the homeless wonder about meals from shelters, because the one meal they used to count on is no longer a guarantee. "The bill comes at a terrible time, when the needs in this country are tremendous."
-- Josh Protas

Last month, the Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Frank Lukas (R-OK), introduced new legislation that will cut almost 40 billion dollars from the SNAP programme, the main source of food funding for thousands of struggling families across the country.

According to a statement released by Lukas after the bill was narrowly approved in the House, the new bill “encourages and enables work participation, closes programme loopholes, and eliminates waste, fraud and abuse while saving the American taxpayer nearly 40 billion dollars.”

‘This is not right’

But while the SNAP cuts may save the U.S. government budget billions, the effects on millions of struggling Americans will be catastrophic, critics say.

“The bill comes at a terrible time, when the needs in this country are tremendous,” Josh Protas, the director of government affairs at Mazon, a Jewish advocacy group that fights hunger in the United States, told IPS. He said the cuts will have a devastating effect on people struggling economically and on food banks and shelters across the country.

“The new cuts will not be able to compensate for the high demand at food banks and shelters, which are already incredibly stretched,” he said.

Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy group, has been pushing Congress to protect the SNAP programme since the new cuts were introduced last September.

“Any kind of cut is really going to hurt families,” Christine Ashley, an analyst at Bread for the World, told IPS. “We estimate that the new cuts will take as much as 36 dollars a month from each family…Think how [many] groceries you can buy with that amount.”

Feeding America, one of the largest hunger-relief organisations in the country, noted in a recent report that up to 75 percent of SNAP households include a child or an elderly or disabled person, all of whom will be affected by the cuts.

Mr. Valentine, 52, is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served for eight years. He is now homeless and unemployed, and he told IPS that he relies on food stamps for all his meals. When asked about the upcoming cuts, he expressed desperation and much frustration.

“These cuts, this is not right,” he told IPS. “I don’t know what I’m going to do if they take this money away from me. I have a wife and an 11-year old daughter. We live off food stamps.” He cannot hide his exasperation as he awaits the daily 6:15 pm van that will bring him and others like him to Adam’s Place Emergency Shelter in northeast Washington for a hot meal.

Valentine also believes that a consequence of the cuts will be an increase in crime. “If people get their stamps cut off, you’re going to see more desperate people committing robberies and things like that. Crime is just going to go up.”

Increased demand on charities

The SNAP cuts come at a critical juncture, as federal employees are still trying to recover from a government shutdown that left them without income for over two weeks. In fact, those federal workers with lower incomes have turned to community shelters to get food on their tables.

“With the government shutdown, we have seen a huge increase in people coming to us for food,” David O. Treadwell, executive director of Central Union Mission, Washington’s oldest social service agency, told IPS. “The SNAP cuts are only going to exacerbate this situation.”

The Central Union Mission is one of several non-profit organisations that provide food for people who do not receive food stamps. Located in the Chinatown district, the Mission runs a Food Place Centre in northeast Washington, where volunteers give away up to 125 food bags per day.

According to Jeff, the food service manager at the Mission, people who come to the Mission simply cannot make it from one paycheck to the next. “It’s already a bad situation,” he said. “It’s only going to get worse.”

As the cuts go into effect, organisations like the Central Union Mission will face considerable increase in demand as people turn to organisations that will feed them without stamps.

Room for hope

The SNAP cuts are part of the larger Farm Bill that was approved by a small majority in the House last month. The new bill is likely to penalise millions of unemployed Americans who cannot find work and who will be immediately removed from the SNAP programme.

“Rather than help unemployed workers who have been hit hardest by the recent economic downturn, this bill would penalise many of those who can’t find jobs by throwing them off SNAP,” Bread for the World and Mazon said in a joint statement with other hunger-relief organisations.

“We will continue to push Congress to protect the SNAP programme in any budget bill,” Bread for the World’s Ashley told IPS. “The bill passed only by a seven-vote margin. This means that there is still enough bipartisan support to keep SNAP alive.”