The Bush administration has eliminated hunger in America, and it was much easier than anyone suspected. They have simply quit using the word.

Yes, the folks who brought you “faith-based initiatives” instead of “lack of separation of church and state,” and “healthy forests” instead of “clear-cutting” are proud to present, “very low food security” instead of “hunger.”

…in Chicago, at the Holy Family Food Pantry, the people lining up for assistance know exactly what hunger means.

“I’m running out of food, so I got to find somewhere to get some food,” Terry Sutton said.

But according to the new government report, that doesn’t necessarily make him hungry.

Sutton and others like him have “very low food security.”

“When they hear ‘very low food security’ it sounds like bureaucratic jargon. It doesn’t sound like people who can’t get enough to eat,” said Deborah Leff of the Public Welfare Foundation.

Some say that may be just the point.

We can expect Rush Limbaugh to chime in any time with a screed about fat poor people and how they’re all just faking it.

Meanwhile, groups like USA Harvest pick up the Bush administration’s slack by fighting hunger all over this country and Canada, including Houston, where, over one year later, many of the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina still live. A study conducted in September showed them not doing very well.

While about 60 percent of the evacuees surveyed had been employed in New Orleans before Katrina, a little more than 60 percent are now unemployed. Almost 74 percent have an annual income of less than $15,000, and almost 17 percent have an income of between $15,000 and $25,000.

Guess we ought to do something about that. Maybe we should call them “geographically shifted people of newfound leisure” instead.