R-4: Resolution Concerning Public Sector Funding For Food and Nutrition - PASSED AS AMENDED

• food security for all people living in this country, by ensuring that people in poverty have access to sufficient food and nutritional balance to promote the optimal physical and mental development of children and to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension;
ensuring that households in poverty do not have to choose to meet one basic human need, such as housing, health care, or food, at the expense of another;

and be it further,

Resolved, this Convention encourages
• federal and state agencies to develop budgets that sustain funding at the levels needed to ensure adequate supplies of emergency food, food stamps, and nutrition programs for pregnant women, infants, preschoolers and children – both during and beyond school hours;
a pragmatic review of state tax policy to identify opportunities to maintain revenue during the ongoing recession without further burdening households struggling with unemployment, low wages, or fixed income;

and be it further

Resolved, this Convention encourages the Bishop, clergy, and members of the Diocese to advocate for food security for Ohio residents, through an efficient partnership of churches, non-profits, business and the public sector, by combining a sturdy safety net with strategies to help Ohio households achieve self-sufficiency.

Resolved, this Convention asks the Secretary of Convention to transmit this resolution to Ohio's elected representatives to the Congress of the United States and to those representatives to the Ohio legislature elected from within the geographic boundary of the Diocese of Ohio;

and be it further

Resolved, this Convention asks the members of the Diocesan Advocacy Committee to plan and carry out a campaign to contact in person the officials elected to state and national office from within the boundaries of the Diocese of Ohio, expressing to them the passionate conviction of this 194th Convention that funding food security for its people is an essential component of life in a healthy and moral commonwealth;

and be it further

Resolved, this Convention asks the Diocesan Advocacy Committee to report to the 195th Annual Convention of the Diocese of Ohio on its work in carrying out this resolution.

Submitted by:
Commission on Global and Domestic Mission

Rationale:

The public sector is important to food security, because Federal and state funds provide infant and maternal nutrition (WIC), school meals, summer nutrition programs, and commodities to the statewide non-profit network of food banks that are the major source of food to over 3,000 emergency food programs, including many of our church-based pantries and soup kitchens. Ohio's non-profit and faith-based emergency food network is overwhelmed with rising need. The foods most important to optimal development and preventing obesity and diabetes – protein and fresh produce – are the most expensive, and increasingly scarce in the emergency food pipeline. Families can use food stamps to buy these crucial nutrients in grocery stores. Food stamps allow them to dedicate limited income to other essentials like rent and utilities.

Ohio has the third highest rate in the nation of children under five at risk of hunger. By August, 2010, with the state's unemployment rate at 10.5%, over 1.745 million (1 in 7) Ohioans were depending on food stamps to meet their families' food needs, with an average monthly benefit of $141 per household. Economists agree that food stamps are one of the most effective stimulus strategies available, because they are spent immediately in the local economy. Each food stamp dollar generates an average of $1.84 in economic activity, according to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services county profiles report data services

Current fiscal policies endanger hunger and human services funding. Congress has adopted a pay-as-you-go rule requiring that new spending must be offset by cuts in other programs. This has already resulted in two moves to slash food stamp funding in order to cover other safety net programs. In August 2010 Congress passed an emergency bill expanding funding for Medicaid, teacher's salaries, and other key programs, but it included major cutbacks in food stamp funding to take effect in 2014. The Child Food Nutrition Reauthorization Bill passed by the Senate imposed an additional cutback on food stamp funding which would take place a year earlier, in 2013. In addition to a significant cut in the average monthly food stamp allotment to families facing hunger, the food stamp cuts in the Medicaid and teacher salary bill alone would result in a loss of over 6,000 Ohio jobs and $1.374 billion in economic activity, based on the summer 2010 Ohio food stamp case loads by county (Source: Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks)

The State of Ohio must maintain a balanced budget and faces a projected $7-8 billion gap between revenues and expenditures which must be resolved in passing the next biennial budget in summer, 2011. Ohio has already drastically cut human services funding in the current biennium, including huge cuts to the county departments of Job and Family Services that administer public benefits and protect child welfare. The pressures to further cut hunger and human services funding will be huge in the coming budget debates.

Legislators have been afraid to endorse plans to increase tax revenue, but advocates for the poor have identified many opportunities. The state tax code is crammed with credits and exemptions (called tax expenditures) costing the state billions in lost revenue every year. These credits and exemptions typically go unexamined in biennial budget debates. In addition, in 2005 Ohio began implementing a 21% income tax cut phased in over five years. The final year of cuts was postponed last winter, but the plan, when fully implemented, sends more than 40% of the tax savings goes to the households with incomes in the top 5%, and only 13% to households in the bottom 60%. In 2005 the state also implemented major cuts in corporate taxes. Taken together, these tax cuts cost the state $2.1 billion in annual revenue, according to the Ohio Department of Taxation. Source: "Report to the Ohio Budget planning and Management Commission,"Policy Matters Ohio, http://www.policymattersohio.org/OhioBudgetPlanningAndManagementCommission2010.htm

As the people of the Church, we are called to speak of the real impact of public policy on the most vulnerable and to work for practical, fair and effective programs to return those in need to stability and security. The enormous effect of the recession – with many middle class people losing jobs, homes, health insurance, and retirement savings – only brings home the spiritual truth that we are all in this together, we must care for each other, and we must work together to ensure a just and wholesome commonwealth.

The Social Justice and Public Policy Network of the Diocese of Southern Ohio prepared this rationale. The 106th Convention of the Diocese of Southern Ohio is considering this resolution in the hope that both dioceses in Ohio will present a united witness in the State of Ohio.