Hunger Priorities 1999 Budget/more info id WAA24289; Sun, 19 Oct 1997 22:56:56 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source:Ted Steege FURTHER ACTION SUGGESTION In addition to writing your own letter to the President, you can help move crucial hunger issues to the top of the list by checking the target list below to see if your own member of Congress is one of the sponsors of the Hunger Has a Cure bill who has not yet signed a "dear colleague" letter to the President. Thanks to Carrie Lewis of the Food Research and Action Center, we can provide you here with a copy of the letter to the President as well as the letter to sponsors asking them to sign on. The original co-sponsors of the Hunger Has A Cure Bill (H.R. 1507) -- Reps. Walsh, Roukema, Hall, and Clayton -- have written to the bill's 130 co-sponsors asking them to join in a letter to the President; as of Oct. 15, the 70 members of Congress have signed. If your member of Congress is on the list below, please write to them, thank them for sponsoring Hunger Has a Cure, and give them a friendly reminder that their signature is important on the letter to the President. It is important to have as many voices as possible weighing in with the Administration during the critical fall period in which budget development takes place. Please Ask the following Hunger Has A Cure Co-Sponsors to Cosign Budget Letter: Morella (MD), Oberstar (MN), Leach (IA), Norton (DC), Thurman (FL), Campbell (CA), Kennelly (CT), Slaughter (NY), Spratt (SC), Meek (FL), Gilman (NY), Fazio (CA), McGovern (MA), Moran (VA), Gutierrez (IL), Boehlert (NY), Vento (MN), Fox (PA), Traficant (OH), Towns (NY), Carson (IN), Foglietta (PA), Lewis (GA), Wise (WV), Wexler (FL), Danner (MO), Tauscher (CA), Bereuter (NE), Davis, D. (IL), Jefferson (LA), Millender-McDonald (CA), Davis, T. (VA), Lofgren (CA), Coyne (PA), Dixon (CA), Stupak (MI), Scott (VA), Pelosi (CA), Pastor (AZ), Stokes (OH), Jackson (IL), DeLauro (CT), Clay (MO), Andrews (NJ), Brown, C. (FL), Nadler (NY), Brown, S. (OH), Ackerman (NY), Becerra (CA), Murtha (PA), Skaggs (CO), Stabenow (MI), Forbes (NY), Ehlers (MI), Kucinich (OH), Kelly (NY), Thompson (MS), Lipinski (IL), DeFazio (OR), Emerson (MO), Hyde (IL), Stark (CA), Pallone (NJ) , Roemer (IN), Bachus (AL), Fattah (PA) -0- Text of Letter Dated September 30, 1997 from Reps. Jim Walsh, Marge Roukema, Tony Hall, and Eva Clayton to "Hunger Has A Cure" Co-Sponsors: Key decisions affecting the poor and hungry will soon be made in setting priorities for the Fiscal Year 1999 budget cycle. We urge you to join us in co-signing a letter to President Clinton (see reverse), calling on him to provide adequate fudning for anti-hunger programs in his FY 1999 budget request. New numbers released on September 15th by the Department of Agriculture indicate that 11 million people in the Unisted States, including over 4 million children, experience moderate or severe hunger on a regular basis. In a rich nation such as ours, that is simply unacceptable. In late August, 1997 hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants living well below the poverty line -- most of them working poor, children, elderly, and disabled people -- lost access to food stamps, and thereby any assurance of adequate nutrition. State response to this undue hardship has been uneven, at best. It is therefore especially critical that the FY 1999 budget include fudning to resotre food stamp benefits to the most vulnerable groups of legal immigarnts. Our Hunger Has A Cure Act of 1997 (H.R. 150) attempts to protect children, the elderly, and other vulnerable populations from facing the harsh realities of hunger. Private charities play a key role in the fight against hunger, but their efforts alone can never filll the need for an adequate, effective federal role in ensuring the minimal nutritional well-being of our nation's poor and vlulnerable. We greatly appreaciate your co-sponsorship of H.R. 1507, and your ongoing concern for the hungry. We look forward to working with you on this and other anti-hunger initiatives. To sign on to the letter, or for further information, please contact Ron Anderson in Rep. Walsh's office at 5-3701, Lisa Bleier in Rep. Roukema's office at 5-4465, Kim Miller in Rep. Hall's office at 5-6465, or Franscesca Fierro in Rep. Clayton's office at 5-3101. With thanks, and best regards. -0- Text of sign-on letter to the President: Dear President Clinton: We the undersigned co-sponsors of H.R. 1507, the Hunger Has a Cure Act of 1997, ask that as you formulate the Fiscal Year 1999 budget you include funding necessary to secure the nutritional well-being of children, the elderly, the disabled, and adults willing to work but unable to find a job. It is especially critical that you include adequate funding to restore food stamp benefits to vulnerable groups of legal immigrants facing undue hardship as a result of recent food stamp cut-offs. Specifically, we urge you to give priority to the following areas: 1.) Restoration of Food Stamp Benefits to Vulnerable Legal Immigrants. As of this month, hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants living well below the poverty line have been cut off of food stamps, many of them working poor as well as children, elderly and disabled persons. State response to their plight appears to be uneven at best. Just as restoration of SSI benefits to some legal immigrants was the right thing to do, protecting millions of families from hunger by restoring food stamp benefits should be a priority. We urge you to provide funding to restore food stamp benefits to these vulnerable populations. 2.) Providing Adequate Funding for Child Nutrition Programs The Summer Food, School Breakfast, and Child and Adult Care Feeding Programs are vital to ensuring adequate, nutritious diets to low-income children. Often, these programs provide low-income children with a significant percentage of their daily nutrition. The loss of start-up funds and cuts in reimbursement rates is weakening the ability of these programs to meet the needs of children at risk of undernutrition. We urge you to provide sufficient funding for these vital programs, specifically: to restore start-up monies for school breakfast and summer food programs; to enhance meal reimbursement rates for meals for the summer food and child and adult care programs; and to reinstate coverage for provision of fourth meals to children who spend long hours in child care centers. We also urge you to support adequate funding for the WIC and TEFAP programs. 3.) Ensuring That No Person Who Is Willing to Work Is Cut off Food Stamps We appreciate your efforts in the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1997 to address unfair cut-offs of food stamp recipients who are looking for work but unable to find a job or a work program slot. Funding for additional work slots and exemptions provides some positive relief in this area. We urge your continued leadership to maintain adequate funding for the food stamp program in the FY 1999 budget, and further ask that you revisit elimination of the cap on the food stamp shelter deduction and increases in the food stamp vehicle allowance. New numbers released on September 15th by the Department of Agriculture indicate that 11 million people in the United States, including over 4 million children, experience moderate or severe hunger. In a nation as rich as ours, that is simply unacceptable. Our Hunger Has a Cure Act of 1997 attempts to protect children, the elderly and other vulnerable populations from facing the harsh realities of hunger. Private charities are doing much to fight hunger, but their important efforts alone cannot take the place of an adequate and effective federal safety net. We appreciate your attention to these most important matters. Ted Steege, Washington Associate for U.S. Programs Unitarian Universalist Service Committee 2000 P St.,NW, Suite 505 - Washington, DC 20036 202/466-7400 fax 202/775-2636 email: tsteege@uuscdc.org ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-10.19.97-22:57:03-26720