Stand Up for Children’s Rights – Call the White House to Save WIC and SNAP
Posted by Michael McKenna on Monday, June 27, 2011
First off, thanks to so many of you who contacted your representatives after reading the last post about the House agricultural appropriations committee bill! Unfortunately, the cuts to WIC, TEFAP, the SNAP Reserve fund, and other programs important to hungry kids remained in the final version passed by the House. That means there’s still work to be done to keep the needs of low-income children at the forefront of our officials’ minds.
No elected official in this country truly wants to harm American kids. But not all officials realize that their efforts to scale back the deficit will have unintended consequences for those kids if they do not prioritize carefully those programs that are on the chopping block. We need to make sure as a society that we simultaneously fight the budget deficit and fight poverty, making strategic investments in programs like SNAP and WIC while simultaneously making those programs work better for the people they serve, and for taxpayers, much like we seek to do through No Kid Hungry state campaigns.
There is still time to influence the White House and the Senate! Vice President Biden has been working with a bipartisan group seeking to reach agreement on $4 trillion in deficit reduction by the first of July. There is a very real chance the bulk of savings will come from widespread program cuts. Please do your part to protect the programs that are important to the success of No Kid Hungry. Earlier this year, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform established as a core principle of any deficit reduction plan, the following:
“A sound deficit reduction package must protect those who are economically vulnerable. That includes our nation’s poor, our seniors, and many of those who live in rural areas.”
This principle was honored during previous legislative deals to cuts the deficit in the 1990s, with positive results both fiscally and socially. We can protect vulnerable Americans and tighten the belt!
So please call the Vice President’s office at the White House today at 1-888-245-0215 and insist that this principle of protection is at the forefront of any and all deficit reduction discussions. Ask that programs for poor children, such as SNAP, are protected so that reducing the deficit does not also mean growing poverty.
June 27, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: joe biden, snap, white house, wic
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