Last fall, a sad milestone was reached in America: More people than ever used food stamps. According to the federal government, about 31.6 million people got the stamps in September. That broke the previous record of 27.4 million people, set in 1994.

One in 10 Americans, many of them children or senior citizens. needed government assistance to maintain an adequate diet. And of course, that statistic applied before the bottom really fell out of the economy -- before massive federal bailouts of the financial industry, before the demise of venerable Wall Street firms, before the layoffs at Caterpillar, Dell, several automakers and employers large and small across the nation.

And the numbers simply confirmed what the good people running the nation's food banks and pantries already knew: That the economic disaster hitting this country means record numbers of Americans are going hungry.

Now, we're not economists. So our understanding about the details of the stimulus bill being debated in Congress is limited. And frankly, we've heard from any number of economists that even they aren't sure what should be in the stimulus bill or how the various stimulus ideas would work.

But this much we know: The stimulus bill should definitely include an increase in food-stamp benefits. Nobody hoards food stamps. They're spent quickly on food, which means a quick jolt of money put into the local economy. And even relatively conservative analysts like John McCain's economic adviser, Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com has said that $1 in federal food-stamp benefits turns into $1.73 in subsequent economic activity -- a darned good bang for the buck.

But this much we know: The stimulus bill should definitely include an increase in food-stamp benefits. Nobody hoards food stamps. They're spent quickly on food, which means a quick jolt of money put into the local economy. And even relatively conservative analysts like John McCain's economic adviser, Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com has said that $1 in federal food-stamp benefits turns into $1.73 in subsequent economic activity -- a darned good bang for the buck.

The House stimulus bill just passed contains a $20 billion food stamp benefits increase, along with a $300 million increase for state food-stamp administrative costs. The latter is an important additional measure to help states handle the big increase in food stamp applications. As Maine has seen with the flood of applicants recently for unemployment benefits, even if we have the money to give them, without adequate staff to process applications, those in need can't get the money they're entitled to get.

Even if an increase in food stamp benefits is passed, there will continue to be many Americans who aren't eligible for food stamps and who will still go hungry. They include the working poor, whose incomes are too high to be eligible for food stamps, but too low to pay for an adequate diet for themselves and their families. There are also the newly laid-off, who may have applied for food stamps, but must wait, in some cases several long weeks, for those benefits to be approved.

Those are the folks who are showing up, children in tow, at the nation's food pantries and soup kitchens, which have reported unprecedented increases in demand in the last year -- a demand they simply can't meet. They line up with others who actually get food stamps, but are nonetheless also in need -- because the food-stamp benefit, while higher than in past years, is still not enough to cover the nutritional needs of hungry Americans.

That's why another stimulus provision is likewise crucial to fighting hunger. The proposal contains $726 million to help pay for healthy snacks for children who remain at school in programs after the instructional day is over, and to expand the after-school supper program for children nationwide (it's now running in eight states).

The supper program is geared to low-income areas where kids are unlikely to be getting their nutritional needs fully met -- which describes many of Maine's rural areas. With parents working second shifts or second jobs to make ends meet, this kind of program is an especially efficient way of getting federal food assistance to hungry children.

As the Senate considers its version of the stimulus bill, we urge them to maintain the additional spending for the nation's hungry. Maine's two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have long been strong advocates of federal food assistance programs, and we expect they will continue that stance.

But given the total rejection of the stimulus bill by House Republicans -- not one voted for the legislation -- we anticipate that Snowe and Collins will be under pressure from fellow GOP members to likewise reject the bill.