those households were able to participate in water more of the three largest federal food and nutrition assistance programs and you're the half of those who did seek out emergency food assistance while their port of having to choose between paying for utilities or heating fuel and food nearly forty percent i did choose between paying rent or a mortgage and food that's a sad state of affairs and it's not something that we should wish on anyone least of all children that are growing up not knowing what it's like to feel secure that every night welcome home and have a dinner eat every morning before they go to school they'll get breakfast to help them start their day and for good food prices increased by three point six percent last year alone meanwhile the measure by the use six about sixteen percent of americans are unemployed millions more can't pay for their homes and forty nine million according to the latest it is six released by the census bureau are living in poverty so for those that want to claim that the recession is over and the economy is recovering well don't forget that might apply to those at

food assistance and the food for peace program. there's a well-known mcgovern- dole program which provides donations of agriculture commodities and financial technical assistance for feeding nutrition projects in low income countries, countries that suffer from the culture of poverty, which could lead to all kinds of distressed and certainly even to where we have to send in troops to bail out these countries. so this is a good prevention. the conference report gave a lot more than what was in the original house level. there's a lot of good in this conference report, but frankly i have to say that there's one part that i'm really disappointed with. under the dodd-frank program we as it ed to construct regulations to protect consumers. the president asked for enough money to get the new review process up and running. mr. dicks: i yield the gentleman 30 additional seconds. mr. farr: thank you very much for yielding. we didn't give it enough money to do that. and then on the last thing, we dropped some crazy part in this program which i think it's gotten a lot of negative attention this week and deserves it. and that is that we, without any discussion or going to the rule, predetermine

medicaid, chip and exchange subsidies deviated from the eligibility requirements for other federal assistance programs. supplemental social security income, supplemental nutrition programs known as food stamps, temporary assistance for needy families, and public housing all include the entire social security benefit as income. my legislation, now a part of this package, adds social security benefits back into the equation. realigning medicaid with the other programs and stopping these improper payments before they occur. closing the loophole in medicaid will save $13 billion over 10 years according to the congressional budget office. and by adding my legislation to this package that includes the 3% withholding repeal and the veterans tax deductions, this package will save vital tax dollars. madam speaker, i'd like to take a moment to praise other sections of this bill and on the heels of veterans day i cannot think of a better time for congress to step forward and help our veterans get to work. as a wife, mother and daughter, i know how important it is that we support those brave men and women who fought for our country. mr. herger: i yield an additional minute. the speaker pro tempo

largest single piece, the supplemental nutrition assistance program formally known as food stamps, unemployment compensation, veterans benefits, federal civilian and military retirement benefits, transportation, health research, education and training and other programs. that whole collection of programs has incurred spending averaging 11.5% of gdp during the past 40 years. with expected improvement in the economy and the new caps on discretionary spending, it falls in our projection by 2021 to less than 8% of gdp, the lowest share in more than 40 years. under current law and in our baseline projection. putting those pieces together including interest payments between 1971 and 2010, as shown by the left pair of bars in the figure, federal spending averaged about 21% of gdp. under current law for 2021, as shown by the right pair of bars, cbo projects it to grow to about 23% of gdp. alternatively if the laws governing social security and the major health care programs were unchanged and all other programs were operated in line with their average relationship to the size of the economy during the past 40 years, federal spending would be much higher i