Durbin's hunger-free communities act

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)in late May introduced new legislation to recommit the federal government to its current hunger-reduction targets for 2010 and to add a new goal for further reductions thereafter. Here is the U.S. Newswire piece from America's Second Harvest:

Senator Richard Durbin (D- IL) introduced the Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2005 today to increase federal funding available to local organizations working to reduce hunger in communities nationwide and establishing an ambitious commitment to end hunger in the United States by 2015. The bill has bipartisan support with Senators Richard Lugar (R- IN), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Gordon Smith (R-OR) as cosponsors.

According to the USDA, hunger and food insecurity in the United States has increased for the fourth straight year. In 2004, more than 36 million Americans -- including 13 million children -- lived with hunger or on the brink of hunger.

Those last statistics are the federal government's estimate of how many Americans and American children live in household that are "food insecure" (a smaller number of households are estimated to have hunger). For all the possible quibbles one might have with the hunger measure, one of the measure's main purposes is for monitoring progress toward national goals. In recent years, the rate of food insecurity has been increasing, bringing us further away from the goal for 2010.