Waiting In The Food Line

The key issue is the working poor. Forty percent of the families in these lines have one parent working. Rick Payne is working full time at a big home improvement store. But he’s supporting a wife and four kids on $7.50 an hour. When we sat down with Payne, his wife, Alexis, and 12-year-old, Brandon, they had $17 to their name.

Payne says he needs gas, diapers, milk and bread. For other expenses, he has little money.

The Paynes get food stamps - $300 a month. That much lasts about three weeks. But at the end of the month they’re living on potato soup.

“It’s funny, I sit and watch these news programs and they tell you to have six months of your income saved. And I just have to laugh at that because you know, I can’t put $5 away per paycheck. I can’t imagine somebody having six months of their salary put away. That’s just completely unobtainable for us,” Payne says.

Almost half the people fed by these lines are kids. The Agriculture Department figures that one in six children in America face hunger. That’s more than 12 million kids. Nationwide, children have the highest poverty rate.
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