It's one thing to walk in somebody else's shoes. It's another thing to live in somebody else's pantry --- for an entire week.

Yet that's just what four members of Congress did in mid-May. Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and JoAnn Emerson, R-Mo., co-chairs of the Congressional Hunger Caucus, issued the "Food Stamp Challenge" to their colleagues in both the House and the Senate to do what millions of Americans are expected to do each week: live off the groceries purchased with food stamps. For a single person, that comes to $21 --- one dollar for each meal, each day.

Only two members in the House, Reps. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., took up the challenge; McGovern and Emerson, having issued the challenge, did so as well.

The challenge showed how far $21 of groceries go today. The answer: Not very.

For Ryan, a Catholic, "the real lesson is not that you can't get food or not enough food, but it's the kind of food you eat," he told Catholic News Service.

Ryan's menu for the week consisted largely of angel-hair pasta, spaghetti sauce, peanut butter and jelly, wheat bread, cornmeal and cottage cheese. "It's not the fruits, not the vegetables that you want," he said. Food stamp recipients, even if they did make different buying priorities, often don't have access to fresh produce at their neighborhood stores, or access to transportation where they could buy fresh produce --- even if they could afford it.

The legislative focus of the challenge was the Feeding America's Families Act, which would increase food stamp outlays by $4 billion a year over the next five years, about a 10 percent increase over current levels.

The bill would most likely be incorporated into the farm bill, a five-year reauthorization that affects everything from agriculture policy to food safety to crop subsidies to nutrition programs, which includes food stamps.

"This is about priorities," Ryan told CNS in a May 22 telephone interview.

"I've really been trying to get Catholics engaged to end the (Iraq) War for a variety of different reasons; I think it's one of the predominant pro-life issues of our time," he said. "I think the money we spend over there could be much better spent over here, (on) the issues the church considers to be the most important social justice issues.

"But frankly, as long as the war's going on, there's not going to be money for these kinds of things," Ryan added.

The Feeding America's Families Act would both increase benefits and expand the groups of people eligible for food stamps, according to Emily Byers, a senior policy analyst for Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger lobby.

"The minimum benefit is $10 a month and this bill increases that," Byers said. "It excludes certain types of savings (such as) retirement savings when people are calculating eligibility; right now, you sort of have to be able to spend down all of your savings (before qualifying for food stamps). You can still save for retirement and get food stamps if you need them." The average $21 weekly food stamp benefit level, the focus of the Food Stamp Challenge, should increase as well, she noted.

Byers said the bill also extends food stamp eligibility to adult legal immigrants who have been in the United States for less than five years. In the 1996 welfare overhaul, Congress instituted a five-year waiting period for food stamp eligibility to all immigrants, she added. "Even if you did everything by the book, you had to wait five years," Byers said. "Children were reinstated a few years ago, but adults still have to wait five years."

The Feeding America's Families Act is so new that even some of its most likely allies haven't signed on yet. "We've told Rep. McGovern (one of 35 co-sponsors) that we're supportive and we're writing him a letter telling him we are, but we haven't sent it yet," said Debbie Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of national organizations promoting policies to assist low-income and other vulnerable people.

At a May 22 "children's summit" hosted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and attended by Weinstein, participants heard an address by Dr. Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrics professor at Boston University's medical school and director of its Grow Clinic for Children. Weinstein said Frank "described food stamps as medicine. Children need to have the proper dose. And Speaker Pelosi was listening intently and I think moved by the crying need for children to have the right nutrition."

Despite a week on pasta, peanut butter, cornmeal and cottage cheese, Ryan said the Food Stamp Challenge was "a wonderful experience. I enjoyed it so much. It was a challenge. The title was appropriate. It was one of those worthwhile challenges that change you at a deep level, and you never look at the world the same again because of it."

---CNS