“I am a low-income single mom struggling to make a better life for myself and my little boy. We receive SNAP benefits. My son goes to a public elementary school. He gets a free lunch. I am working hard and trying to use these benefits as a stepping-stone and I am close but I have not yet been able to live independently without them. Without assistance like these, we would be struggling much more than we already are.”-Jessica

**Moms like Jessica are not alone—and we need to let Congress know that too!

In fact, 40.6 million people currently live in poverty and many of them depend on assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or food stamps) in order to make ends meet. Without these life-saving programs who knows where moms like Jessica would be. One thing we DO know: Cutting these programs hurts families and our economy alike. For instance the return on investment for SNAP is high because people immediately use those funds to fuel our local economy and are able to avoid ending up in worse situations. It’s foolish on a number of levels to cut programs like these.

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***Speak out today for Jessica, the millions of moms who are struggling to make ends meet, and our economy. Sign our letter to the U.S. Congress asking them to protect vital healthcare and nutrition programs! 

Don’t delay. We have a real threat on our hands! Congressional Republicans held their Republican Retreat last week to set their 2018 agenda and talked about making scary changes to key programs that boost our economy and help struggling families provide vital healthcare and nutrition. In fact, right after the GOP-led Congress passed the largest tax scam in decades, benefiting billionaires and wealthy corporations over working families, Speaker Ryan laid out his plans for 2018 saying,

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit. Frankly, it’s the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements —because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

Fact check: It is the Trump tax plan that will raise the deficit by a staggering $1.5 trillion (TRILLION!), not healthcare and nutrition programs, which lift our economy and our families out of poverty and prevent many from falling deeper into poverty. So it turns out that this has been the GOP leadership’s plan all along—pass a massive tax cut for Wall Street and then make working families pay for it by raising their taxes and cutting the healthcare, nutrition, and education programs their families need the most.

We won’t stand by silently while cuts and changes are made to programs like Medicaid and SNAP that harms our families and our economy.

***Sign our letter to Congress now telling them to protect the healthcare and nutrition programs that boost our families and our economy! 

Investments that boost our families’ health care and nutrition mean the world to us... and to our economy. Support systems like Medicaid and SNAP keep families out of poverty, give kids a healthy start in life, help parents work, and fuel our economy. The last thing American families and our economy needs is a budget that’s balanced on the backs of struggling families or so-called “welfare reform” packages that will make struggling families and our economy worse off. After all, 72% of our GDP is based on consumer spending, and if the majority of the people don’t have funds to spend, then our economy runs out of gas. That’s why most people support budget and tax policies that lift families. A poll by the Pew Research Center agrees, finding that the vast majority of people, both Democrats and Republicans, support maintaining or increasing federal spending on health care and education programs.

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Anti-hunger programs like SNAP are critical for our nation’s families and our economy alike. Seventy percent of SNAP participants are in families with children and over half of those families have at least one adult in the household working. SNAP helps parents work, promotes healthy eating, and responds quickly to disasters and crises like a hurricane or an economic downturn. This critical program also lifts our economy. For instance, because SNAP benefits are so urgently needed by families, they are spent quickly – 97% of SNAP benefits are redeemed by the end of the month of issuance – thereby bolstering local economies. 

Children who receive SNAP do better educationally, have better health outcomes and grow up to be better workers and are better able to contribute to our economy. Further, 45 million people – including one in four children in America – use SNAP to put food on the table and make ends meet. 

Medicaid is a wonder for kids and families too! Medicaid is lifting up families, empowering people to work while caring for children with disabilities or elderly parents, and allowing people who were priced out of access to healthcare to finally get the medical treatment they need to keep them healthy and productive. It is critical for families and critical to our economy. Currently over 70 million people are covered by Medicaid, including 10 million people with disabilities. Medicaid covers half of all births in the United States, and 60% of nursing home patients. Threats to the program would create a crisis for our nation and particularly for families in vulnerable communities, including low-income families, people with disabilities, the elderly, and those who live in rural and medically underserved communities, with a compounding impact in Black, Latinx, Asian, Native American, and LGBTQ+ communities.

Funding threats, structural changes, and partisan fighting all risk the success and well-being of our families that use important healthcare and nutrition programs like Medicaid and SNAP. That is why now is the time to speak out, sign our letter, and let your members of Congress know that these programs matter to your family.

***Sign our letter now! 

We need to speak out against this awfulness that will affect so many avenues of our lives. We know speaking out early on and making a ruckus works! We raised our voices, signed letters, and made calls during the Affordable Care Act fight last summer and we won! We need to continue on in that spirit and speak out again in order to protect our families healthcare and nutrition. After you sign our letter to Congress double down on your efforts by forwarding this email to five friends and posting our action page to Facebook.