Congress Must Immediately Pass Build Back Better with Child Nutrition

Yesterday, the White House announced a deal on the Build Back Better budget. The $1.75 trillion package provides supports for universal pre-K, child care, Medicaid expansion, and other support services to help families and individuals take care of essential needs so they can work jobs and move forward out of economic crisis.

Thank you to all of you who joined us in advocacy for investments to fight child hunger and poverty. Our efforts are making a big difference as the new deal includes a one-year extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit payments. Additionally, it invests $10 billion and includes child nutrition provisions that will increase year-round access to nutritious meals for school aged students by doing the following:

• Increase the number of schools that can use the Community Eligibility Provision to provide breakfasts and lunches at no cost to all of their students-this also includes the ability for states to use CEP to do universal school meals statewide.
• Give all states the option to provide grocery assistance to students that are eligible for free or reduced price meals during summer months. Summer EBT not only helps decrease food insecurity but helps prevent summer learning loss when kids are healthier and better able to focus on learning when they return to school in the fall.
• Provides $30 million in school kitchen equipment grants and $250 million for healthier school meal demonstration projects.

Collectively, these investments will help reduce child hunger, ensuring that our kids have the fuel they need to focus on learning and to be active at play. These changes are temporary but if we make these investments now, we have the chance to add even more evidence that shows how effective these changes are at fighting child hunger and poverty.

But the deal isn’t done yet. We need to keep the pressure on Congress to pass this deal immediately with the child nutrition provisions. Hungry kids can’t wait any longer.

What You Can Do