Citation of Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Senate Resolution 281

The subcommittee held 4 days of hearings, May 23 and 29: June 12 and 14, 1968, on Senate Resolution 281, to establish a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs. For a complete transcript of these hearings see: U.S. Congress. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States, 90th Congress, second session. 1 vol.

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Remarks of Senator George McGovern and Other Senators on the Introduction of Senate Resolution 281, April 22, 1968

[From the Congressional Record, Apr. 22, 1968]

Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. President, there is today being released a report by the Citizens' Board of Inquiry Into Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States demonstrating anew that millions of infants, schoolchildren, and adults in this affluent Nation are undernourished. Permanent physical and mental impairments stemming from malnutrition are widespread both in our cities and rural areas.

Entitled "Hunger, U.S.A.," the new report is a study of the inadequacies of our food distribtuion programs among the poor. However well intentioned, these programs still leave a painful hunger gap among multitudes of Americans condemned to half lives because of deprivations beyond their own control in both childhood and adult life.

The one statistical summary of the overall situation in the report is that only 18 percent of the 30 million poorest Americans are receiving Federal food aid. That cold statistic is highlighted by numerous heartrending stories of human suffering.

There is sufficient evidence to indict our food distribution efforts on the following charges, the report tells us:

1. Hunger and malnutrition exists in this country, affecting millions of our fellow Americans and increasing in severity and extent from year to year.

2. Hunger and malnutrition take their toll in this country in the form of infant deaths, organic brain damage, retarded growth and learning rates, increased vulnerability to disease, withdrawal, apathy, frustration and violence.

3. There is a shocking absence of knowledge in this country about the extent and severity of malnutrition-a lack of information and action which stands in marked contrast to our recorded knowledge in other countries.

4. Federal efforts aimed at securing adequate nutrition for the needy have failed to reach a significant portion of the poor and to help those it did reach in any substantial or satisfying degree.

5. The failure of Federal efforts to feed the poor cannot be divorced from our agricultural policy, the congressional committees that dictate that policy, and the Department of Agriculture that implements it; for hunger and malnutrition in a country of abundance must be seen as consequences of a political and economic system that spends billions to remove food from the market, to limit production, to retire land from production, to guarantee and sustain profits for the producer.

Perhaps more surprising and shocking is the extent to which it now rests within our power substantially to alleviate hunger and malnutrition

I shall comment later on as to what I regard to be an injustice in singling out agriculture in such a blanket indictment, but I want now to mention another study.

Last Monday, five national groups of churchwomen told us that the school lunch program is reaching only one-third of the 6 million children who need free or low-cost lunches. Federal, State, and local support of the program, intended not only to guard the lives and the health of our children but to make them capable of acquiring an edu

cation, has been inadequate to achieve its most important objective— providing adequate nutrition to those children who, because of their parents economic situation, could not otherwise be nourished adequately.

Mr. CLARK. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. McGOVERN. I am happy to yield to the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been such an effective leader in spotlighting the problems of malnutrition and hunger in various parts of the country.

Mr. CLARK. I thank my friend from South Dakota. I wish to commend him for the action he is taking in the speech he is presently making.

I believe it is very important, indeed, that there should be a select committee of the Senate composed of representative members of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, and the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, and other Senators appointed by the Vice President, without regard to committee assignment, because in my view we are not doing nearly enough at the executive level or in the approach by Congress to see that no American man, woman, or child, and particularly children, should suffer from malnutrition, hunger, or, indeed. starvation.

Mr. HART. Mr. President, I am delighted that the Senator from South Dakota has made the proposal which he has suggested. I shall not interrupt the Senator at length nor shall I express my pleasure as fully as I feel it.

Many of us have the impression, and some of us have seen studies which support the feeling, that in this land of plenty there are plenty who do not eat very well.

I do not know how many Americans with incomes of less than $2,000 a year are actually given Federal assistance to enable them to have some kind of nutritional diet, but I have heard shockingly low estimates. I do know that a great many children, including those in schools, and most particularly preschool children in this country today, are not getting the kind of nutritional food that the most coldhearted, the most sharp-eyed bookkeeper would defend as decent in a land where the opportunity to give that child a decent meal is great.

The difficulty is that because of the several committees, all of which have a measurable responsibilty in this area, we are not able to zero in on the problem, identify its extent, the opportunities to meet the need, and then the action that would insure that the need is met.

Therefore, it would seem to me that the select committee that the Senator from South Dakota now proposes may be the most effective means promptly of making sure that this country does do justice to men and women, pensioners and little children alike who today go to bed hungry.

Mr. MCGOVERN. I want to thank the Senator from Michigan, and also take advantage of this occasion to express my appreciation for his leadership last week in restoring the school lunch program to the level authorized by the House, which was one of the really constructive and significant steps that we have taken in the Senate this year. I commend the Senator from Michigan for making it possible.

Mr. President, I am distressed at the picture described in last week's school lunch report, "Their Daily Bread," of children who have no