A Robust Food Safety Net for Washington

Last week in Olympia, the House and the Senate released their supplemental budget proposals for our state operating budget. Both proposals include strong investments in our food safety net:

• Both the House and the Senate add about $75 million to support the We Feed Washington program that buys nutritious, locally grown food from Washington’s producers to make food boxes to distribute to our neighbors in need.
• Both the House and the Senate also make long overdue increases to the Seniors Farmers Market Nutrition Program which helps low-income seniors shop for fresh fruits and vegetables at their local farmers markets. The House goes further in its investment in order to double the annual benefit from $40 to $80.
• Both the House and the Senate also increase funding for our state’s Basic Food Employment Training program so that immigrants who receive food assistance from our state will now be able to access job placement, case management, and other employment training services through a partnership between local community colleges, community based organizations, and our Department of Social and Health Services.

We are also thankful to the House and Senate for including $3.2 million in their capital budget proposals to support the cold storage system at our Yakima warehouse which is currently under construction. With support from the state, we’ll be able to quadruple the amount of fresh produce that we send to our food distribution partners in every county of the state.

Lawmakers will be negotiating a final supplemental budget, and now is the time to weigh in with them to ensure that the final budget includes these investments. We also want the final budget to include funding to support our bills that will expand access to school meals and the following:

• $17 million in capacity grants for hunger relief organizations to help meet the increased operations costs for food distribution to households in need.
• Investments to strengthen the cash grants for families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: specifically, we support the Senate’s funding of a $127/month diaper subsidy to be added to the cash benefit for TANF families with children under three and the House’s proposal to extend TANF benefits to families who need more time after reaching the 60 month lifetime limit because they are experiencing hardships that are prolonging their economic crisis.
• $10 million to support the community outreach and technical assistance in helping low-income families enroll in the new Working Families Tax Credit. This partial return of sales taxes paid by these families provides flexible cash to help cover essential needs and will be critical, since studies are showing that the end of the expanded federal Child Tax Credit payments has caused child poverty to rise by 41% since payments ended in December.

The strength of the House and Senate budget proposals show how much legislators have been listening to and responding to the ongoing public health crisis of hunger caused by the pandemic. Our voices are stronger together; we must continue to encourage the legislature to prioritize robust investments in our safety net to close the inequitable gaps so that we can come out of this stronger than ever.

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