LUGAR: Helps on food issues

By Stephen Dick, Herald Bulletin Assistant Managing Editor

November 15, 2008 10:35 pm

— MUNCIE — Besides his foreign policy expertise, Sen. Richard Lugar serves on the Senate’s agriculture committee and has always been a backer of food banks.
That’s what brought the former farmer to Second Harvest Food Bank on Saturday where he spoke to a crowd on the organization’s new warehouse.
He defended the earmarks that were used to get Second Harvest the money to move out of an inferior building in Anderson. People go into a tizzy when earmarks are mentioned as if they were something added to the budget.
“Earmarks are helpful to Indiana,” he said. Senators put in appropriations to existing bills because they know their states and what they need.
“We take responsibility for it,” he said. “We put it on the (Senate’s) Web site. It’s upfront.”
Lugar said he has been working on legislation to provide tax breaks for small businesses that deal in food to make it easier to get food to places like Second Harvest.
With transportation costs, it’s easier to throw the food away, Lugar noted.
“There are a great number of people who would be more likely to make a donation to food banks if there were some tax breaks.”
When he was mayor of Indianapolis, he recalled, getting federal money just wasn’t done. He tried to get funds for a school breakfast program, but the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and the Indianapolis Star were against it on principle.
“Nowadays you take for granted that people will support these programs.”
He met resistance again in 1994 when Republicans took over Congress. The Gingrich Revolution, led by then-incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich, wanted to eliminate federal aid to the school lunch program, but Lugar resisted in the Senate.
“The bill didn’t move. The school lunch program survived. It’s very important.”
Taking a tour of the Second Harvest warehouse, Lugar marveled at the 2 1/2 acres of storage, and praised Lois Rockhill, director of Second Harvest, for her efforts in expanding the food base, which serves eight counties.
He noted that when he was mayor he attended National League of Cities meetings, and it was a common calculation through the years that 10 percent of a city’s population had food problems.
“Nowadays economists think it might be more than 10 percent.”
Rockhill said that 49,000 people in the Second Harvest area live in poverty with another 72,000 on the edge.
“It’s a huge problem,” she said.
Talking to Lugar, she said, “It’s important to have someone at the federal level who’s concerned with people’s needs, people who do not otherwise have a voice.”