Surprise! House Republicans Perpetuate Their Draconian Budget

House Republicans are at it again.  Early this week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture released a budget manifesto that makes some unfairly extreme changes:

• Slashes a summer food aid pilot program by $58 million – limiting food assistance to select rural areas and ignoring children in suburban and urban areas as school lets out for the summer, even though:

• Rates of food insecurity are just as high in large cities;
• Among big cities, at least one in four live below the poverty line;
• More than one in four Hispanic children live in food insecure households; and
• Nearly one in three African American children live in food insecure households.

• Overrules the expertise of doctors and nutritionists so that expecting mothers and infants under the WIC program – which serves 9 million mothers and 53 percent of our nation's newborns; and

• Scales back on nutrition standards for school meals, ignoring the needs of our school children.  In order to be successful in the classroom, we must fuel their minds with healthy, nutritious foods.

Already, the Ryan Republican Budget gets 69 percent of its cuts from programs benefitting low income communities, while giving millionaires at least a $200,000 tax break.  Food insecurity and poverty do not have a zip code – it affects millions of children everywhere.  Mothers and infants should not be forced to risk their health and our childrens' well-being should not be compromised at a time where one-third of them are overweight or obese.  The American public should have the choice of healthy food and deserve better than this shameful, callous, and mean-spirited Republican partisan proposal.