On Friday, a woman in Florida went hungry. Hundreds protested and sent letters to Congress. Congressional leaders became so enraged that they have called a special vote to ensure that this woman is provided with food. Congressional intervention is necessary, they argue, because access to food is her “constitutional right.”
On Friday, a woman in Florida went hungry. No one protested. The Senate was so indifferent to her and her family’s hunger that they voted down a measure that would have prevented $2.8 billion in cuts to the Food Stamp program over the next five years.
While Congress has spent the past few days making heroic efforts to restore the feeding tubes to Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years, they have also been debating the federal budget. While Terri Schiavo’s case has sparked passion about her right to live—and her right to health care and food—there is no passion for the millions of Americans who go hungry every day or the millions more who lack access to basic health care.
President Bush has cut his vacation short to return to Washington so he can sign into law legislation that would restore Terri Schiavo’s feeding tubes. Last month, President Bush proposed a budget to Congress that would cut the Food Stamp program by $500 million over the next five years, leaving more than 300,000 low-income people without food assistance every month.
The proposed budget includes large cuts in federal programs providing food, housing, education, and medical assistance to low-income families. It includes cuts in funding to those with HIV/AIDS by $550 million over the next five years. It ends Housing and Urban Development’s 30-year pledge to produce accessible supportive housing for people with disabilities. It will leave 670,000 fewer individuals on the Woman, Infant, Child food program by 2010.
The proposed budget would reduce the budget for Medicaid by $45 billion dollars over the next 10 years, leaving an estimated 1.2 million fewer children without health care each year between 2006 and 2010. This will mean that in Terri Schiavo’s home state of Florida, 67,400 fewer children will have access to Medicaid each year.
These proposed budget cuts will have devastating effects on the ability of millions of families to meet their basic needs.
The Food Stamp program allows hungry families to purchase food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 11.2 percent of all U.S. households are “food insecure;” of these, 3.9 million households suffer from food insecurity so severe that they go hungry.
Last year, nearly 70 million Americans went without health insurance for some time during the year. Children were more likely to go without it than adults. Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for one in seven children. Since only half of all children (53.0 percent in 2003) receive health insurance from an employer-based health insurance plan, Medicaid plays an important role in ensuring that millions of children have access to the health care system.
The Schiavo case has sparked debate over what it means to die with dignity and moral questions about who decides when a person lives or dies. It should spark debate over what it means to live with dignity.
Why is it that a woman who cannot speak and cannot move should not be denied her constitutional right to food and water, when every day, men, women, and children go hungry without a right to food? Why is Terri Schiavo’s case more important than theirs?
But Congress wants you to know that they value life—Terri Schiavo’s life. This does not mean, however, that they value the millions of other Americans denied their constitutional right to food and health care.
Heather Boushey is an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.
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