The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Food Stamps and Hunger

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Rev. J. H. WOODARD, Washington: Anything that's in food stamps now, any dime that's in food stamps is over the dead body of the administration and the Department of Agriculture.

Sen. JAKE GARN, (R) Utah: The entire NASA budget is less than half of food stamps.

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ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. President Reagan today ordered the creation of a White House task force on hunger and gave it 90 days to produce what he called a no-holds-barred report on the causes of hunger in the United States. Presidential counselor Edwin Meese was directed by Reagan to form the task force to examine the extent of America's hunger problem, to determine its causes and to recommend solutions. The announcement of the task force comes at a time when government nutrition programs are being newly attacked and newly defended on several fronts. The Reagan administration has been pushing to cut more than a billion dollars from food stamps next year, a move supported by conservatives in Congress. But others in Congress are fighting the cuts, saying that social programs like food stamps have already been cut just when they were needed because of high unemployment. The Commerce Department reported today that the number of Americans living below the poverty level last year was the highest since 1965. The poverty level for a family of four was put at $9,862, and some 15% of Americans were said to be below that mark. Tonight, with key players in the growing debate, including the secretary of agriculture, the politics of hunger.Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the hunger task force announcement did come as food and the federal government were already very much in the news; some of the attention triggered in an unusual way by Agriculture Secretary John Block himself. Last week he announced that he, his wife, his daughter and a friend would eat for a week on $58, the amount allotted a family of four under the food stamp program. His trip to the supermarket in suburban Maryland was a media event, covered by a small legion of reporters and cameras. It was a gesture not universally applauded, and today, before a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington to discuss hunger in the cities, the criticism continued.

Rev. J. H. WOODARD: Rather than an attitude of trying to solve the problem of the hungry in this country, I find the Department of Agriculture being defensive and misleading in what they say in public, like Secretary Block's thing of living for a week on $58 worth of food stamps, which I think people find just kind of funny if it weren't so tragic. So I would appreciate it, as one who's working with this thing every day, if the Department of Agriculture's not going to address the problem of hunger in America in a positive way, if it would at least stand aside and not confuse the picture.

LEHRER: That statement was made today before the announcement of the presidential task force. The secretary of agriculture, John Block, is with us.Does the announcement of the task force mean that the Reagan administration and your department are not going to stand aside on the hunger issue, as this man charged you have been?

JOHN BLOCK, Secretary of Agriculture: It really means that the President continues his deep concern about hungry people in this country. And because of a lot of talk and a lot of apparent need for food, he wants to take a close look at it, and have people go out and come back and report to him the facts of the matter, rather than trying to base some conclusion on a lot of rhetoric.

LEHRER: You use the word "apparent" need for food. Does that mean that you don't believe there really is such a need?

Sec. BLOCK: No, I'm convinced there is a need. I don't think there's any question about it. You see, the administration's food stamp program has increased its resources allotted to food stamps by some 45% in the last three years. There are more people on food stamps than ever in history in this country. The President directed that I open up the doors of the commodities to people across the country -- we're giving away commodities, which is beyond the food stamp program. We've given a billion dollars' worth away in the last year. And they are being used -- I've been to many of these places. So the program is in place and we're working to address the problem.

LEHRER: So, in other words, the appointment of the task force is a way to silence the political critics of the administration who are saying that the administration is not doing anything about hunger and the food problem? That when in fact you say you are?

Sec. BLOCK: The appointment of the task force is to find out the facts. The President wants the facts. I want the facts, frankly. I've sent teams to cities across the nation as far as San Francisco and Cleveland and Detroit and others, trying to find out if there is something that should be done that we're not doing. And that's what the President wants this task force to find out. We are firmly committed to feeding the hungry people in this country, and as the President says, he says, "I'm fully committed to feeding poor people in the nation," and that's his quote. And that's our job, and we're going to get the job done.

LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, the man on the tape also criticized your $58-diet week. Where are you, by the way, in that?

Sec. BLOCK: There are a couple of days left after this. And I have to take some exception to that, really. After all, if I was in the business of selling tractors, I think I'd drive it around a little bit to make sure that I had a good product and I was satisfied with it and it would work. And I'm responsible for administering a program that provides food to 22 million people. That's one out of 10 people in this country. And there's isn't -- I think it's a good thing that I just try it out and see how it works. And I -- that's the point, that was the objective. And maybe I can have some good advice for people that are on the food stamp program as a result of this effort.

LEHRER: Well, as you know, Mr. Secretary, much of the criticism was not so much that you did it, but that you did it with this great flare of publicity beforehand rather than quietly going and doing it and then announcing the results afterward. In retrospect, do you think it became too much of a media event that hurt you?

Sec. BLOCK: Well, it certainly became a big media event, but the media made the event out of it, actually. You know, they're the ones that chose to come and report it to the extent that they did. And I think that really does show that the public is interested in the food programs, and the public wants to know about the food programs, and I compliment the media for putting it out to the public. Why not let the public see what's going on in the food programs?

LEHRER: Thus far -- you say you have two days left. That means you've been on this for five days, is that it?

Sec. BLOCK: That's right.

LEHRER: A great mathematician that I am. Well, how's it going? I mean, give me your summary as of now as to what you've found out as a result of doing this.

Sec. BLOCK: It's just gone fine. It's -- you have to be careful and budget the food properly. The Department of Agriculture -- this is a little advice -- and the states provide menus and guidance to people on food stamps, and I think it's wise to follow this, especially if you haven't had any experience, which we had not. And so we followed it closely and we've had, you know, an adequate amount of food. And I've been very careful, the whole family has. I haven't had so much as a cup of coffee outside of the food stamp allotment of $58.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: There is an active antihunger lobby in Washington made up of many organizations. One of them is the Food Research and Action Center, a privately funded interest group working to end hunger in this country. The center's director is Nancy Amidei. Ms. Amidei, what's your reaction to the formation of a presidential task force?

NANCY AMIDEI, Food Research and Action Center: I guess I'm mostly fascinated. The President said that one of his reasons for doing this was that he was perplexed by accounts that people should be hungry. And I am perplexed that he should have had that reaction, because it seems to me that the basic facts would have told him that that would be a problem long ago. If I can, let me just outline why I think that's the case.

MacNEIL: Before you do it, let me just ask you this. The secretary has just said they wanted to base recommendations and decisions on facts, not on rhetoric.

Ms. AMIDEI: That's correct, and let me offer you a few facts. For four consecutive years now the number of people living below the poverty line has gone up. So this isn't the first year we've had an increase in poverty. And by definition, people below the poverty line have less than what's needed to get even a minimally adequate diet. So that's a group, together with the group called the near-poor, just above the poverty line, that are at risk. For four straight years that number has expanded. At the same time, the President's proposals, followed by his supporters in the Congress, have caused fewer people to be eligible for any kind of food assistance at all, and even those who still get any kind of help now get less. So for him to be perplexed that there should be hungry people when we have a group at risk that's now about 47 million Americans, but only, as the secretary pointed out, about 22 million even get food stamps, there's a big gap already. And the food stamp recipients get so little -- the secretary, you know, has just commented that he seems to be doing all right on this food stamp diet --

MacNEIL: Let's come back to that in a moment. What is your center's assessment of the hunger problem in this country right now?

Ms. AMIDEI: Well, part of it is a personal assessment that I have to give you because I was part of the Senate Nutrition Committee staff for four years back in the late 1960s and early '70s. And I know from personal observation and from study in this area, over 15 years now, that I am seeing and hearing things I haven't seen or heard in this country in a very long time. The hunger situation now is at least as bad as it was in the late 1960s and with less excuse. But the evidence that we get in our office, apart from my personal observations and experience, confirms that every day. We have a growing stack of studies from across the country; we have evidence from medical people about clinical malnutrition; we have a growing stack of reports from private agencies and public agencies; investigative journalists -- everything that confirms what those poverty numbers would tell us, and that is that there are more hungry people.

MacNEIL: So you don't think a presidential task force is needed?

Ms. AMIDEI: Well, I think it's a little bit late in the day. And I am certainly going to be very interested to see what they produce right about Thanksgiving time, which is what I calculate it's going to come out at, if he gives it 90 days and they have to appoint people. But the notion that anybody would be surprised, under the circumstances, that there is hunger in this country, given the budget and policy decisions of the last few years, is just astonishing to me.

MacNEIL: Now, what's your opinion, finally, on the secretary's experiments with the food stamp diet?

Ms. AMIDEI: I was about to point out that the secretary is living better than most food stamp recipients. Over 80% of the food stamp recipients don't get an allotment as big as his. He's getting top dollar, so we need to keep that in context.

MacNEIL: That $58 a week.

Ms. AMIDEI: That's right. Most people get substantially less than that. The average benefit works out to about 47 cents per person, per meal.That's what most people get. So his experience is a little different. I'm afraid I'm a little more cynical. I think the secretary won't be surprised, because he knows that I spent the first six months of his administration trying to get him to meet with low-income people, and his office steadfastly refused. And when he finally did meet with low-income people, he wasn't interested in learning what was happening with the programs; he punted all the questions to his aides. So for him now, two and a half years down the line, to suddenly decide that he's interested in learning how low-income people are faring on the food stamp diet, after the soup kitchens are filled with people and the emergency food pantries are having to turn people away and the numbers are swelling everywhere and we've got evidence all over the country that we have a serious problem on our hands, it leaves me a little cynical to think that this well-fed, well-paid man, in a family that has nobody who's still growing, is going to cut back a little bit for a week and tell us that it says anything about what is happening to people who have been unemployed for a year and a half. It just doesn't wash.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Food also had the attention today of Congress. The House this afternoon passed a resolution calling for no more cuts in the food stamp or other federal nutition programs. The vote was 407 to 16. Meanwhile, three Republican senators held a news conference at an unusual place, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Surrounded by $21 million in $10 bills, they announced a food stamp reform program they said would save that much every week in costs.

Sen. JAMES McCLURE, (R) Idaho: The amount of money you see before you today, about $21 million -- $21 million -- is the amount of money that the federal government mismanages and misspends every week in the food stamp program.

Sen. WILLIAM ARMSTRONG, (R) Colorado: But we need to do something, not only to save the taxpayers some money, but more important than that, to restore the faith of the public in this program.

LEHRER: Senator Armstrong, Republican of Colorado, is with us, and so is a key man in the House action, Congressman Leon Panetta, Democrat of California, chairman of the House Nutrition Subcommittee and co-sponsor of today's resolution against any further cuts in food programs. Senator, to you first. There are 17 points in your reform proposal. Generally, what are they designed to accomplish?

Sen. WILLIAM ARMSTRONG: Generally they are designed to put a stop to the flagrant abuses of the program. For example, there's a house painter in Texas who applied for and was granted food stamps in 23 states, and he got away with it for two years before they finally caught him. Last September in Chicago, 42 people were arrested for food stamp fraud, and it turned out that before they caught them, $500,000 had been stolen by these 42 people, 24 of whom worked for the federal government. So the General Accounting Office came out with an estimate, by the way, that $2 billion is being lost through this kind of fraud and abuse, and our proposal in general addresses itself to ways to tighten up. For example, we suggest a photo identification card so that people have to prove who they are when they use the food stamps. We suggest that they have to countersign the food stamps, just like you do travelers checks, in order to control the abuse. Possibly the most important recommendation of all, in terms of tightening up the administration, is to give the individual states who administer these programs a real incentive to cut the error rates, which run as high as eight, 10, 12, 15, 16 percent error rates. And we're saying that --

LEHRER: Error rate meaning giving the money to the wrong person -- I mean giving the food stamps to the wrong person or whatever.

Sen. ARMSTRONG: Yes, indeed. And in some cases, failing to give them to people who actually deserve them. We're saying that there ought to be a real incentive for the states to adminster the law in a much less haphazard way.

LEHRER: Congressman, is what Senator Armstrong and his two colleagues suggesting your idea of a cut that your resolution doesn't like?

Rep. LEON PANETTA, (D) California: Well, I'd have to look at their full bill, but the indication I've received from the proposal they've made is that the bulk of the recommendations that they have are benefit reductions -- don't have very much to do with fraud, waste or abuse. Congress is willing to consider those issues; I'm willing to consider them on my subcommittee in terms of trying to improve the administration of the program. The reality is that the bulk of the proposals that have been made by the Senator, the bulk of the proposals made by the administration, 80% of the proposals by the administration go to benefit reductions. And I don't think this is the time to reduce benefits, when the President himself says we ought to be looking at the hunger issue in this country.

LEHRER: Senator?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: Well, the General Accounting Office -- which our viewers know is the watchdog of Congress, are the people who audit these things -- say there's at least $2 billion a year that we can go after in things that apparently Mr. Panetta and I could agree on. Now, there's certainly some policy issues that we might not agree on, but the main focus that I want to call attention to tonight is that if we're going to do what's right by people who need our help, in order to maintain the faith of the taxpayers and the general public, we've got to root out this kind of abuse in the program.

LEHRER: Is it your position, Senator, that all of your reforms could be accomplished without reducing or eliminating benefits to people who are truly needy?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: It's certainly my position that all of the 16 recommendations we have submitted could be implemented without taking anything away from deserving persons. The result of some ofour changes would in fact be reductions in people who we think may not be needy. For example, those who might be above the poverty line wouldn't fall into a needy category, although certainly if they're receiving food stamp money they may think it's desirable to do so, and from their standpoint it is.

LEHRER: What's your view of that, Congressman?

Rep. PANETTA: Well, many of these proposals have been bouncing around for years. These are, frankly, warmed-over Jesse Helms proposals that have been bouncing around for a long time, many of them.

LEHRER: Jesse Helms being senator from North Carolina.

Rep. PANETTA: The senator and the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The fact is that the Congress has rejected those proposals consistently over the last few years. Today's vote in the House was a significant vote, 407 to 16, basically stating that we are not going to support any additional benefit reductions for people in need. That's the statement that's been made. The Senate passed a similar resolution. The Congress is not about to enact additional benefit reductions while at the same time the President is creating a task force to look at the problem of hunger in our society.

LEHRER: What do you think of that task force idea, Congressman Panetta? Your subcommittee just completed a series of hearings around the country on this question of hunger. What do you think that task force is going to find out?

Rep. PANETTA: If the purpose of the task force is to determine whether or not there is a problem of hunger in this country, they're wasting their time. If the purpose of the task force is to develop steps to deal with the problem of hunger, then there may be some merit to the task force. The reality is, all you have to do is look around at the facts. The Conference of Mayors issued a report saying there was hunger in America -- significant problem of hunger in America. My committee has had hearings throughout the country, with the conclusion being that there's hunger in America, increasing hunger. The GAO has said the same thing. The county administrators have said the same thing. You just don't have to look very far to find the facts supporting the conclusion that people are going hungry in our society.

LEHRER: Do you agree with that conclusion, Senator Armstrong?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: Well, I don't agree with the characterization of it by Mr. Panetta, because in part the problem arises for reasons that aren't related to the lack of an adequate program but to improper administration, for the lack of information on the part of deserving poor of how to take advantage of the program. In some cases people are going hungry precisely because the federal government has come in and interfered with privately funded and operated Meals on Wheels programs. But I don't think we ought to focus on that to the exclusion of these reforms, because if we're really serious about this program we must realize it's increased enormously. We started out less than 20 years ago for $50 million. Now it's at $12 billion. And clearly we can't expand it indefinitely. We've got to find some reasonable place to draw the line at need, and I think we can all agree, or certainly the panelists here can agree we're going to take care of people who need it, but we ought not to take care of people who are just cheaters on the system.

LEHRER: As a Republican senator, Senator Armstrong, do you feel that this task force is a result of some political heat the White House is getting on this issue?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: I haven't the faintest idea what prompted it, but I think it's a good idea. I think it's a reasonable thing for the President to do, and I think it reflects his own personal concern as Secretary Block has said.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, are you going to go ahead in the administration with pushing the $1-billion cut or reduction in eligibilities in the food stamp program, to take effect in the financial year which begins October 1st, before this task force has reported?

Sec. BLOCK: I don't think we're going to see any action on that before then, probably. And I would point out, this billion-dollar reduction or savings is primarily arrived at as a result not of benefit reductions. And I know that Congressman Panetta and I disagree on that, but not as a result of benefit reductions, but rather as a result of correcting and charging for error rates, and correcting the error rates in the states, and moving to a standard deduction system, which is kind of complicated, but if we have a standard deduction we'll see less errors and there'll be less cost to the public at large.

MacNEIL: Ms. Amidei, how do you see Senator Armstrong's proposal and the administration's proposal?

Ms. AMIDEI: Well, I'd like to put it in a little bit of perspective. I've really been troubled by what I've been hearing, and I'd hesitate to call what a senator is saying a matter of fraud, but it's certainly misleading.He gave us two examples. Let me put a little perspective on that.Last year, in 1982, all of the fraud claims that were recaptured by the Department of Agriculture amounted to $4.6 million, and that was at a time when the program cost about $11 billion. I tried earlier today to work that out as a percentage, and I can't even tell you what it comes out to because it's got so many zeroes after the point.

MacNEIL: Let me ask the senator about that. Senator?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: Well, I think she's correct in saying that we're not doing a good job of getting the recapture. That's exactly the point. There is not an incentive built into the system to do so, and one of the proposals which are contained in our bill is to give the states a reason to vigorously pursue these abuses. Certainly we're not getting the kind of return we ought to have at the present time.

Ms. AMIDEI: If I may, it's not that we're not going vigorously after this; we certainly are, have been for years. There have been a hundred --

Sen. ARMSTRONG: I beg to differ. We are not.

MacNEIL: Let her just speak for a moment, Senator, and we'll come back.

Ms. AMIDEI: There have been 155 regulatory changes in the program in the last five years, most of them to tighten up the program. And the reason he was able to mention those two instances that he could was because the program is tight and it does catch the fraud. But in addition to that, the error rate has been coming dramatically down. In the last three years it's come down over a third, and it's now down for all reasons -- clerical errors, somebody making an honest mistake, the office making a miscalculation, a computer going wrong -- everything is down below 10%; it's somewhere in the order of 9 1/2% now -- that's very low.

MacNEIL: Senator?

Sen. ARMSTRONG: I don't think a nationwide error rate of 10% is anything to brag about, and in many areas it is much higher than 10%, in some states as high as 16%. In any event, why quibble about the extent of it? The reforms we've suggested are reasonable, will hurt no one, and let's at least take that portion of it and agree to it and act on it, and then we can argue about some of the policy decisions later.

Ms. AMIDEI: Excuse me, Senator, but that's not quite right. Because the bulk of the savings that you'd achieve would be by not allowing food stamps to go up as the price of food goes up. That has nothing to do with fraud, waste or mismanagement. You'd get other major savings by eliminating the minimum benefit to elderly and disabled people, several hundred thousand of them. That has nothing to do with waste or fraud. You would penalize people who live in areas of the country that have high energy costs, and you would tap them and give them fewer food stamps. That has nothing to do with fraud, waste and abuse. Most of the savings in your proposals are totally unrelated to fraud, waste and abuse, and everybody in the program would get less benefits as a result of your proposals, the poorest of the poor included.

MacNEIL: A short comment, Senator, before we move on.

Sen. ARMSTRONG: Well, simply that it is true, and I said this at the outset, that there are both policy recommendations for changes in the structure of the program, and administrative measures. And I'm just saying let's, as a point of departure, agree upon the things like the countersigning and the photo ID and the incentives to the states and the other provisions that are clearly not controversial at the policy level, and might save us a couple of billion. Let's take those and then go on and talk about the others one by one.

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, how do you answer Ms. Amidei and Congressman Panetta, who say you don't need a White House task force to discover that there's hunger in the country because you have all the studies by these various bodies they've mentioned to tell you that it's there?

Sec. BLOCK: Well, certainly I heard, just some of the studies mentioned to me. But the fact is we know that there are more people using the private sources, the churches, Salvation Armies and others for food; there are more people on food stamps today. Which is telling me that as a result of our serious recession that there is more need in the country. But I would submit that there is a mammoth effort going on to help meet that need. It is a cooperative effort with the federal government providing more resources than ever before in history. One out of 10 people are on food stamps; one out of six people receive some kind of food assistance. We are working with states, we are working with private institutions that are going out and making food available. The Second Harvest is out getting food for this; the private sector is cooperating. This is the American way of people helping their neighbors, and I just submit that there is a lot being done. Now the President has a task force.Of course, he wants to see, is somebody slipping through the crack, who are they, why are they slipping through, what can we do about it to salvage those people, to help them? And that's what we want to do.

MacNEIL: Congressman Panetta, what's your comment on that?

Rep. PANETTA: Well, very frankly, I think that's what Secretary Block gets paid to do. And to create task forces to essentially repeat what is the responsibility of the secretary, the secretary of human resources -- I just don't think it makes very much sense, very frankly. Now, as I said, if in fact the task force comes up with proposals to deal with the hunger problem in our society, then there may be some merit to it. But at this point to say that we're simply going to look and see whether there's a problem out there, I just think, as I said, that I'm perplexed that the President is perplexed.

MacNEIL: Mr. Secretary, he says you're not doing your job if you need a task force.

Sec. BLOCK: Well, I just can't buy that at all. We're getting a lot of information back about how much is being given out. We get members of Congress, mayors. I personally have called three or four of the mayors that were at the meeting in Denver and spoke to the hunger issue, and I've talked to them on the phone; I've sent teams out there to work with them. I have had a team in West Virginia where we've had the highest unemployment, sone 30%. My administrator of food and nutrition service has been there meeting with the people, trying to find ways to be helpful. And the truth is, we've gotten a lot of compliments from these people. It has not been all criticism, and they think that we're doing a pretty darn good job.

MacNEIL: We have to leave it there.Thank you for joining us, Congressman Panetta, Senator Armstrong; Ms. Amidei in New York. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That's all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.