KHI NEWS SERVICE
TOPEKA, March 9
Gary Brunk, executive director of Kansas Action for Children, will testify Tuesday about the food stamp program to a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture.
Brunk is one of several speakers invited to address the nutrition subcommittee at a meeting set to begin at 10 a.m. Tuesday in Room 1302 of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C.
The meeting”s purpose is to review the Federal Food Stamp program and its impact on children”s nutrition and health. Kansas Action for Children is a Topeka-based advocacy organization which works to improve the lives of Kansas children.
Of the approximately 183,000 Kansas who benefit from food stamps, 48 percent are children, Brunk said.
Of those, about
33,000 are preschool age
.
In Kansas, the average food stamp benefit, per person and meal, is 95 cents.
Kansas congressmen Jerry Moran, a Hays Republican, and Nancy Boyda, a Topeka Democrat, are members of the nutrition subcommittee.
The farm bill proposed by the administration that”s moving through Congress contains a proposal to cut federal support for food stamps by $540 million over five years, even though 50,000 more Kansans get food stamps now than did five years ago.
Former U.S Sens. Robert Dole, R-Kan., and George McGovern, D-S.D., teamed with other members of Congress in 1977 to rework the Food Stamp Act of 1964 and create today”s law.