WASHINGTON, DC – Final week, 112 mayors from throughout the nation signed a bipartisan letter urging Congress to guard, strengthen and totally fund federal vitamin packages throughout ongoing funds negotiations. The mayors are members of the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger, a nonpartisan coalition representing greater than 400 mayors throughout all 50 states and Washington, DC, working in partnership with Share Our Energy’s No Kid Hungry Campaign. The letter comes as Congress is contemplating large cuts to vitamin packages as a part of its funds course of.
“We categorical our concern for the rising variety of kids in our nation dealing with meals insecurity and starvation if these cuts are enacted. There are growing pressures on the associated fee and availability of meals, together with viral diseases in animals raised for consumption, a diminished variety of agricultural staff, and persevering with world battle. Our cities are on the frontline of responding to challenges in our communities, and as mayors, we’d like each choice out there to struggle childhood starvation,” the letter states.
The letter particularly references SNAP, WIC, and college meals as priorities for congressional members to think about as they proceed negotiations, making notice of the huge variety of folks the packages affect:
- SNAP is one in all our nation’s strongest instruments to finish starvation. It helps 41+ million People, together with 1 in 5 kids.
- About 6.6 million folks take part in WIC month-to-month, together with 4 of 10 infants in america.
- About 29.6 million college students eat lunch in school, and 72 % of these lunches are for college kids whose households qualify at no cost and/or reduced-price meals.
A message encouraging restoration of the improved Youngster Tax Credit score closes out the letter.
“Youngsters don’t know partisan traces,” mentioned Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, PA, who serves as Vice-Chair of the Mayors Alliance. “The options lie not simply with mayors regionally and with college districts and nonprofits, however they actually lie in state legislatures and in our federal Congress. It’s incumbent upon the Mayors Alliance to remind our state legislatures, remind our congressional members that childhood starvation exists and that the options do matter on the state and federal ranges.”
The signatories of the letter to Congress span the political spectrum–Republican, Democratic, Nonpartisan, and Unbiased–but all come collectively to agree that no youngster in America ought to go hungry.
