Tell Congress: Reject Dangerous House Budget

The House Budget Committee’s FY18 budget proposal presents a skewed vision for America: it slashes supports for struggling, low-income Americans, cuts discretionary spending that helps promote community development and economic opportunities for all Americans, and creates tax cuts that are heavily tilted towards benefiting the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Such a proposal is dangerous: the results of these cuts will roll back years of progress in the fight against hunger and undermine the efforts of struggling families to attain self-sufficiency.

Details of the budget will be coming out when the Budget Committee issues its report, but here’s what we know so far:

• The budget uses reconciliation orders to fast-track sweeping policy changes to cut $203 billion from entitlement programs such as SSI, school meals, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families over the next decade. Under reconciliation, the House Agriculture Committee is charged with finding $10 billion to cut from SNAP over the next 10 years.
• SNAP would see an additional $150 billion cut towards the tail end of the next ten years by turning the program into a block grant. Block grants shift the costs of administering a program to the states, ridding the program of the flexibility to expand and contract according to need. In other words, were SNAP to be turned into a block grant, SNAP would no longer exist as we know it and count on it to be: a safety net to alleviate hunger and stimulate our economy during economic recessions.
• Erodes the progress made in participation and access to school meals in the highest need schools with a $1.6 billion cut to the Community Eligibility Provision.
• More than $2 trillion would be cut from Medicaid and Medicare, making health care unaffordable for children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-wage workers.
• Non-defense discretionary spending for programs that foster economic development, including helping students afford college, would be slashed by $1.3 trillion.

Congress must reject this budget that makes it even harder for millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of low-income Washingtonians to make ends meet. Join us in calling on Congress to craft a budget that buckles down on ending hunger with investments in job training, child care, nutrition assistance, and expanding opportunities for all Americans.

WHAT YOU CAN DO