"These "food-insecure" households represent about 49 million people and make up 14.6 percent, or more than one in seven, of all U.S. households. That's the highest rate since the U.S. Department of Agriculture began monitoring the issue in 1995.

"Additionally, more than one-third of these struggling families — some 6.7 million households, or 17.2 million people last year — had "very low food security," in which food intake was reduced and eating patterns were disrupted for some family members because of a lack of food.

"In phone interviews, more than two-thirds of people with very low food security said they went hungry from time to time, and 27 percent of these adults said they didn't eat at all some days.

"These families make up 5.7 percent of U.S. households, again the highest rate since 1995, up from 4.1 percent and 4.7 million households in 2007."

And in the Washington Post: "The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat.

"In a statement, President Barack Obama called the report unsettling and said it was particularly troubling that there were more than 500,000 families in which children experienced hunger multiple times last year."

Where have Obama and his "deficits more important than unemployment" minions been?  With their heads deliberately up their multimillionaire posteriors?

Stagnant wages have been a fact of life for many years; rising unemployment has been a fact of life as the Bush administration supported and promoted their corporate cronies' offshoring of jobs to countries with low, child and slave labor wages and US manufacturing becomes almost just a memory; and the housing bubble of artificially inflated $$$ values created by the greedy real estate business in cahoots with deregulated banks, that the financial industry gambled with at the Wall Street casino brought about the financial and economic disaster for which regular Americans are paying the terrible consequences.

Obama and company continued the Bush bail out of Wall Street with billions of giveaway dollars while Main Street got a chump change stimulus that did nothing effective to prime the employment pump and all Obama can say is that the USDA report is "troubling" and "unsettling."

Why the hell are there hungry people in the US in the 21st century while Wall Street crooks are making billions thanks to the Bush and Obama administrations?