Sometimes, you have to wonder if Congressman James McGovern wouldn’t be more at home in the U.S. Senate — where federal lawmakers seem to care more about feeding our nation’s poor than do their counterparts in the House of Representatives.
McGovern, D-Worcester, is one of the biggest champions of fighting hunger in Congress. So, it’s a good thing that he has been named to serve on a congressional conference committee to complete a five-year reauthorization of the Farm Bill, which provides money for food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). He will be instrumental in deciding how much money will go toward the food stamp program that helps feed millions in America, and has for nearly half a century.
McGovern, the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee’s Nutrition Subcommittee, was appointed last month by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who criticized House Republicans for advancing “a destructive and partisan bill that fails farmers and hungry families.” But she added that the 18 Democratic conferees, like McGovern, “will bring the strength of their values and wide-ranging expertise to the work” of melding House and Senate ideas on the Farm Bill in a way that “honors our responsibility to the men and women of agriculture and hungry families.”
Earlier this year, House Republicans passed, without a single Democratic vote, what McGovern’s office called a “partisan Farm Bill that included extreme cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In doing so, they turned their back on a long history of bipartisanship as well as the economic security of millions of Americans.”
Maybe these Republicans just don’t understand or appreciate hunger because it doesn’t exist in the world they inhabit, or maybe they just don’t care about those less fortunate. But McGovern gets it.
Clare Higgins, the former Northampton mayor who is now executive director of the nonprofit Community Action Pioneer Valley, the anti-poverty agency that serves our region, recently explained the importance of having McGovern on the conference committee. “He’s the Number 1 defender of SNAP in the country and has never wavered for a moment in his commitment to see that people are not left hungry. SNAP is under attack in profound ways, so I’m really glad he’s at the table.”
McGovern himself has said “farm bills shouldn’t be about beating up on poor people” and criticized the House version for significantly reducing benefits for millions of the “most vulnerable in our country.”
“The House’s bill was drafted in secret and is not reflective of the 23 hearings that our committee held on SNAP over the past 2½ years,” said McGovern. “The only bipartisanship throughout the whole process was the bipartisan opposition to this awful bill. In the Senate, the process couldn’t have been more different. Democratic ideas were heard and incorporated into the final text. SNAP benefit levels were maintained, and vulnerable families would continue to have access to modest food benefits when times are tough.”
So, we, like our congressman, hope the final Farm Bill more resembles the Senate version.
McGovern has been a tireless advocate for the hungry. The most visible example of this has been “Monte’s March,” his 43-mile annual trek with Montague resident and radio personality Monte Belmonte, from Springfield to Greenfield each year to raise money for the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts in Hatfield.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that about 33,600 households in McGovern’s 2nd Congressional District receive help from food stamps. Nationwide, about 42 million people participate in SNAP, more than two-thirds of those being households with children, seniors or people with disabilities.
So, for the sake of poor and hungry Americans here and across the nation, we are thankful to have McGovern and others like him on the conference committee, fighting for what’s right.