Den of Thieves

"I DON'T THINK anyone in their right mind believes that there is a massive hunger problem" in America, says George C. Graham, professor of international health and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and the only doctor on Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Food Assistance.

Graham, in an Associated Press story of December 29, 1983, went on to insist that, contrary to popular belief, Black children are "probably the best nourished group in the United States." The pediatrician cited as evidence the achievements of Black athletes. Malnutrition exists in certain areas, he said, but hunger among children "is not a national problem."

One initial impassioned reaction to this might be that Graham, like so many other people in Washington, is a racist pig. But surely this description is unfair to the barnyard swine, who, for all their disgusting habits, do not steal food from starving children and then lie to escape responsibility for the resulting sickness and death. That has been the thrust of the Reagan Administration's policy, which Graham seems intent upon seeing continued.

Some lies should not be lent even the scant legitimacy of refutation. But in this case, it is important to realize what a vast falsehood has been advanced--and to recognize that the money taken from hungry children has, in effect, been transferred to the military.

When Reagan appointed the hunger task force last August, he claimed to be "deeply concerned about the extent to which we have a problem that should not exist in this great and wealthy country," and confessed to being "perplexed by these accounts" of hunger in America.

In fact, the puzzled President needed to look no further than his 1982 and 1983 budgets. A Washington-based foundation, the Children's Defense Fund, has analyzed the extent of the damage Reagan has wrought, in a 244-page study called A Children's Defense Budget, from which the following information is drawn.

The Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) is a program that provides food supplements such as milk, eggs, juice, and iron-fortified infant formula to pregnant and nursing women, children and infants. To receive WIC aid, the recipients must have low income and be certified by a medical professional to be in danger of illness from malnutrition.

A Harvard School of Public Health study cited the WIC program as a measure that markedly reduced the incidents of low-birth-weight babies. A separate study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that infant mortality rates were one-third lower among WIC children when compared to infants in similar circumstances that were not getting assistance. When Reagan took office, there were 2.3 million people being served by WIC, with tens of thousands more languishing on waiting lists or turned away because there wasn't enough money to help them. The Administration's first blow at the program was a 1981 proposal to cut WIC by 30 percent. Congress, which the Children's Defense Fund says considers WIC "one of the most effective programs run by the federal government," rejected the Reagan cut.

Undaunted, the Administration bypassed Congress and encouraged some states to cut their WIC programs. This resulted in 200,000 people being removed from the program in fiscal 1981--while $60 million in WIC money remained unspent. Congress ordered the Reagan Administration to reinstate the removed women, infants and children, and to serve as many people as possible. But by August of 1982, five states had run out of funds, while 25 states had unused money. By law, the Department of Agriculture must shift funds to needed areas, but it refused to do so. After a federal judge ruled that the Administration's refusal was illegal, the 200,000 people were placed back in the program, and funds were used to prevent program cutbacks in the five states.

Congress and the courts stopped the Administration from gutting the WIC program, but yet another effort was made: the 1984 budget proposal kept WIC funding at the same level as the year before--$1.09 billion--with no increase for inflation. As food prices go up, an estimated 115,000 people could be dropped from the program. There are about the same member of WIC recipients now as when Reagan took office.

IN SHORT, the federal program most successfully alleviating hunger, sickness and death among infants and young children has been subjected to an unrelenting and at times illegal attack by the Reagan Administration. Other hunger programs have proved less resilient: food stamps have already been cut $2 billion, and the Administration is calling for cuts of $3 billion more in coming years. Some 875,000 people have been cut from the food stamp program.

And hunger, of course, is a national problem, particularly among Black children (one half of whom live in poverty). Dr. Graham contended publicly that Black infant mortality rates are high not because of hunger, but for "cultural" reasons, including a refusal by expecting parents to abstain from sex. Gynecologist Patricia Conrad of New York speedily refuted Graham's statement, pointing out that sex during pregnancy is safe up until the eighth month--provided the mother is not malnourished.

What next? In light of Reagan's bafflement about the existence of a national problem he has done so much to exacerbate, it seems likely that he will accept the fabrications of unreconstructed racists like George Graham. Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says the Hunger Task Force is about to propose as much as $1 billion in cuts in food assistance over the next few years.

The Children's Defense Fund has proposed that food programs for children be preserved and expanded, and that a closer budget-cutting eye be turned on the Pentagon. Here are some of the Fund's calculations about the Department of Defense:

* Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38's private dining hall at the Pentagon costs taxpayers $400,000 a year; it could be made to run on a self-sufficiency basis.

* Every year, $2 million goes for 24-hour-a-day emergency "Redline" phones, which always have operators on duty. The phones have been used for calls to everything from hobby shops and dog kennels to restaurants, banks, hairdressers and hunting clubs. The price of the phones equals what it would cost to give breakfast to 2 million poor children.

* The cost of the carpeted reviewing stand at Parris Island's Marine recruit depot could have provided mid-morning food supplements to 83,000 low-income children in child care centers.

* Planes for military stunt flyers--the Air Force's "Thunderbirds" and the Navy's Blue Angels--cost taxpayers over $200 million, with tens of millions more spent each year on the program. This is about twice as much as Reagan says he wants to save from cuts in school lunches and breakfasts.

THE FIGURES are remarkable. You couldn't in a thousand years dream up such a system, where starving infants are denied food while, for example, 21 new battle cruisers--at a cost of $1.05 billion each--are built. It is a systemic problem. On December 20, 1983, Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) was on the CBS Evening News, pointing out some of the military's worst excesses. Roth decorated a Christmas tree with $100 in odds and ends, for which the Pentagon--with its "cost-plus" method of insuring that all contractors make huge profits--would have paid as much as $100,000. A small wrench that Roth bought for 12 cents had been purchased by the Pentagon for $1600.

If even a tiny fraction of the waste that is endemic to the American military were diverted to food programs like WIC, hunger would be vastly diminished and infant mortality rates lowered. As things stand, however, the Pentagon is going crazy and the children are going hungry--and dying. As President Eisenhower aptly noted in 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."