1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

As your constituent, I urge you to fight for kids and families by supporting the following programs: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is one of our nation's most powerful tools to end hunger. Across the country, 40 million people, including 1 in 5 children, participate in the program. SNAP supplements a family's food budget and is a safe and effective way to feed children. But the food provided by SNAP does much more than fill a child's stomach. It helps kids grow up smarter, stronger and healthier, and that means a smarter, stronger and healthier nation. Cutting SNAP benefits or making it harder to access the program for qualifying families would leave millions vulnerable, particularly children, seniors, and people with disabilities. WIC provides critical nutrition benefits to nearly 7 million women, infants and young children across the country. It helps ensure kids get a healthy start by connecting children, pregnant women and new moms with nutritious foods like formula, milk and fresh produce for their families. This program is vital to ensuring that our nation's youngest people start life with the best possible nutrition, setting the foundation for a healthier, more successful future. Lawmakers across party lines have supported WIC since it was established more than 50 years ago, and this bipartisan commitment to enhancing the well-being of kids and new moms must be continued today. For many students, a healthy meal is the most important school supply--as important to their learning as a new notebook and pencils--and school meals are a healthy, convenient and affordable way to ensure students have the nutrition they need to thrive in the classroom and beyond. School meals play a critical role in ensuring kids get three healthy meals a day while also helping families stretch their food budget. Not only are they healthy, with research showing that for many kids, the meals they eat at school are the most nutritionally balanced meals they get all day, but they're convenient and create a sense of community. Cutting school meals for kids would be devastating, leaving millions of children without access to nutritious meals that are essential for their health, academic success and overall well-being. All of these programs work together to weave a net tight enough that no child slips through. Cuts to one program would create a ripple effect on others, leaving kids without crucial meals or resources. Policy changes and cutbacks on the scale that's been proposed will have very real and damaging impacts on our families, our communities, our economy, and a broad range of your constituents. I urge you to prioritize and protect kids and families by opposing efforts to roll back access to any of these important nutrition programs that help parents and caregivers put food on the table for their families.