Previous Story
Food stamp official commits to helping the CNMI
|
Posted on Jul 22 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Responding to CNMI Delegate Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan’s impassioned call to help the hungry in the Northern Mariana Islands, a top food stamp official at the Department of Agriculture committed her agency to improve the nutrition assistance program in the Marianas at a congressional hearing yesterday.
Sablan laid out his case for putting the Northern Mariana Islands into the national food stamp program at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Nutrition and Horticulture.
Sablan argued that the people he represents in the Northern Mariana Islands are being denied access to food assistance because a “food stamps lite” program, negotiated by the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Commonwealth government, is inadequate and inflexible. Even people who do receive help, he said, get much less than other Americans, yet face much higher food costs.
Sablan is a member of the Agriculture Committee’s Nutrition Subcommittee, which has oversight over the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. SNAP provides food aid to some 44.6 million Americans, but the Northern Marianas does not participate in the program.
The sole witness for yesterday’s hearing was Audrey Rowe, administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service at the Agriculture Department.
“Do I have your commitment to help the Northern Mariana Islands,” Sablan asked her in front of a packed Agriculture Committee hearing room.
“You have my commitment,” Rowe told Sablan.
Sablan’s emotional description of many of his constituents’ struggle to feed their families riveted the attention of his colleagues on the Subcommittee and the listeners in the audience.
“You may not have a vote,” Republican chairwoman Jean Schmidt of Ohio told Sablan in front of the gathering. “But your people have a voice.”
Members of Congress representing non-state areas do not have a vote in the House chamber, but do vote on legislation in Committee and vote on leadership positions within the Democratic and Republican Party caucuses. [I](PR)[/I]
