NEWS HOST:
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Absolutely. So during the shutdown, we saw these incredibly long lines at food banks. The shutdown has now been over for a couple of weeks. SNAP benefits are going out again. But even before the shutdown, food insecurity was at its highest rate in nearly a decade. So what is the situation now that you're seeing at food banks around the country as we head into the holidays? Yeah, so I'm so glad that you made that point. I think your viewers may be surprised to learn that food insecurity rates before the shutdown were higher than at any point during the pandemic, as an example. We're continuing to see very high demand. I think part of the reason is because the fastest-growing group of people turning to the charitable food system are people who don't even qualify for any federal nutrition programs. So this is an area that we've got to stay focused on. We know the kinds of things that work. We need to do those things so that we can really address what's happening with hunger and poverty in the country. What do you think is contributing to the rise in hunger and this group of people who, as you say, don't qualify for benefits but are showing an increased need for food? Yeah, I think it's that the system is broken. Right now, there's so many people, if you can imagine, in this country who can't afford to get a raise at work because we have a system that does not incentivize people to continue to move up the ladder. We've got ladders with big missing rungs, if you will. So we can do something about that. We could have a sliding scale, for instance, that allows people to move out of poverty. By doing that, because food insecurity is actually a symptom of poverty, they'll move out of that as well. We as a nation should all want people to be able to provide for themselves. We should all want them to be able to get work that they can feel proud of and support their families with. We have the power to do all of those things. It will require that we work together, that we be honest about what's broken, and that we really get committed about fixing those things. What are the main challenges that the organizations in your network are facing this holiday season as they try to feed people who are hungry? Is the food there for the people who need it? Yeah. Unfortunately, the lines are longer than the food that is available. And one of the hardest things to witness will be seeing these people, who have the same dreams and aspirations for their kids and themselves as I have for mine and all of your viewers have for theirs, feeling the need to turn to the charitable food system. It takes a lot of courage and resiliency and commitment to family ofttimes to be able to do that. And then for them to turn up in spite of all of those barriers and us not be able to provide them with what they really need. So I have a deep respect for people experiencing hunger in this country. I've been a person who's experienced hunger before. I know many people who have, many people who still do. So many of them are my heroes. And then another set of heroes that I have are people working in this fight in the Feeding America Network, who show up shoulder to shoulder with people experiencing hunger, who are so deeply committed to their well-being. So we need to position people experiencing hunger to be able to fend for themselves. And we need to position food banks to be able to provide them with the support that they need in this moment until they get there. As you know, there are about 2 million Americans who are going to be affected by changes to the SNAP program that were made earlier this year in a vote by Congress. They will not be receiving SNAP benefits any longer. What are the economic implications of that? And in about 30 seconds, what can your organizations do about it? Mmh. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we're probably looking at about a 6 billion meal per year gap that's going to be created. So the kinds of things that we ought to do, we ought to address fraud where it exists. We ought to incentivize people to be able to get the hand up that they need and to move out of poverty. We ought to address error rates. But we ought to do all of these things strategically, and we ought to do them in a bipartisan way. This ought to be the kind of thing that this country can come together around, that we can hold hands shoulder to shoulder, because when people are experiencing hunger-- We have to leave it there. We've got our heart out. But thank you so much, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot from Feeding America. Thank you so much.
