The notion that there is a crisis of child hunger in America is among the many myths that liberals like to propagate to justify ever-more government. Interviewed in London yesterday, Nancy Pelosi cited an oft-used false statistic on the subject.
On Tuesday, MSNBC's Morning Joe played that clip with delight. Mika Brzezinski announced at a commercial break they would play Pelosi "taking on the myth of AOC." Was she taking on myths, or spreading myths? Pelosi said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won in a "safe" district, and the Democrats need to win swing districts:
PELOSI: When we won this election, it wasn't in districts like mine or Alexandria's—and she's a wonderful member of Congress, I think all of our colleagues will attest. But those are districts that are solidly Democratic. This glass of water would win with a "D" next to its name. But the 43 districts--we won 43, net gain of 40--were right down the middle. Mainstream, hold-the-center, victories. And if we're going to be helping the one in five childen in America who goes to sleep hungry at night, who lives in poverty in our country, we have to win.
Mika gushed, "I love her!" Mika wasn't responding specifically to Pelosi's one-in-five line. But neither Brzezinski nor anyone else on the show called Pelosi out on her falsehood.
As Hoover scholar Paul Roderick Gregory has written [emphasis added]:
"The USDA’s most direct measures of child hunger show that around 1 percent of families with children have a child who experienced hunger (skipping meals or not eating for a whole day) at least one day in the last 12 months. This is a far cry from “1 in 5” children going to bed hungry we hear regularly in the media. The USDA’s figures for an incidence of child hunger on an average day show that one tenth of 1 percent of children were hungry on an average day."
So Pelosi would have people thinking that one in five children go to bed hungry, whereas the real number on any given night is about one in 1,000. But like they say: close enough for government work, especially when you're a liberal pushing for more programs and spending. In fact, the real food-related problem for poor American children is not hunger: it's obesity.
Pelosi's in England, proclaiming the need to vote Dem: it's for the chillren!
