Contact your Senators! Ask them to Vote NO on the Anti-Poor House Cuts!
Posted by Michael McKenna on Monday, March 7, 2011
This week, the Senate will take up the bill, H.R. 1 that I described last week. If you are as concerned as I am about what these spending cuts will mean for millions of low-income Americans, make sure you tell them so.
A group of us from Share Our Strength visited some of our partners in Dallas last week. For me personally, the trip was bittersweet.
On the one hand, I was truly uplifted as I witnessed the innovative approaches the organizations took to helping individuals in need get back on their feet with dignity. But on the other hand, I had a sinking feeling in my gut knowing that much of the progress in neighborhoods like Pleasant Grove was due in part from federal funding that is now under threat under the House legislation. Federal funds for nutrition programs, education grants, and housing assistance - in other words, the safety net - is working and smart non-profits like the ones Share Our Strength funds are leveraging the programs that exist for a reason. I don’t want to see the hard-won gains made by people like Destiny Geter fall to the wayside.
In my last post, I pointed out that the money for reimbursements for summer meals or school breakfast comes from a different part of the budget and is therefore protected (at least right now). But that doesn’t mean that kids will still have access to those meals. In Dallas, our partner CitySquare runs a cutting-edge summer meals delivery system, in which mobile meals trucks drive around from apartment complex to apartment complex.
The program is staffed entirely by VISTA volunteers, who man the trucks and recruit the kids rain-or-shine for 12 weeks. If H.R. 1 passes, there will no longer be funding for the parent agency of the VISTA program. That means no summer meals for 16,000 kids in the CitySquare summer meals program, and who knows how many millions of kids more in other parts of the country that also participate in programs staffed by VISTA volunteers.
There is an alternative bill in the Senate that cuts $6.5 billion. So I humbly ask that you: Call the Capitol Switchboard NOW at 888-245-0215. When you get connected to your Senator’s office, say:
“Please VOTE NO on H.R. 1 and VOTE FOR the Senate full-year FY 2011 bill.”
The working poor are barely getting by as it is, and the economic recovery is fragile. If these cuts go through, historians will talk about their impact on the youngest generation’s health and well being for generations to come.
March 7, 2011 | 1 comment(s) | Tags: congress, no kid hungry
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1 reader comment so far.
Do NOT cut! PLEASE support! Thank you!
Posted by Denise McGrady on March 8, 2011
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