John,

The Senate and then the House are voting in the coming days to fast track budget cuts that will harm our communities for years to come. By this weekend, the Senate is expected to vote on a budget resolution that sets the stage for cuts so severe that they could prevent millions of children from accessing nutrition programs at school and at home.

This is because the budget resolution paves the way for more than $1 trillion in cuts to SNAP, child nutrition, and Medicaid—which will result in tens of millions of low-income people losing their health care and nutrition benefits.

While the language of the Senate budget resolution is expected to be vague, it will allow the House and Senate to proceed with specific and harsh health care and nutrition cuts—a dangerous open door that senators should reject.

Currently, schools that serve a high number of students in families receiving SNAP and Medicaid can provide free meals to all students via the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). 85% of eligible schools have opted into the program, serving more than 23 million children in more than 47,000 schools across the country.¹

Under a proposal from House Republicans, community eligibility would be restricted to schools where 60% of students are in households receiving SNAP or Medicaid benefits, up from the current 25% threshold. That change alone would be devastating to millions of families. But the extreme Medicaid and SNAP funding cuts required by the House budget resolution would make things much worse.

When children and families are kicked off of SNAP and Medicaid, this impacts families access to school and summer meal access along with WIC.² Summer EBT and school meal programs use SNAP and Medicaid data to automatically enroll children. About 80% of WIC applicants are approved using automated phone or web-based systems to check for SNAP or Medicaid receipt. In addition, if low-income families with children lose their SNAP and/or Medicaid benefits, it will drop many school districts below the new proposed qualifying threshold, increasing hunger in already vulnerable communities. If the Senate votes to pave the way for these changes, Congress could make more than 24,000 schools no longer eligible for the program—affecting 12 million children.³

The Senate is scheduled to vote on its budget resolution later this week. Send a direct message to your Senators and urge them to support children and nutrition programs and vote against this budget resolution.

The United States is the richest country on Earth, and yet 47.4 million households are food insecure, including 7.2 million households that include children.⁴ This is a stunning failure that falls at the feet of policymakers who too often prioritize corporate and millionaire profits over vulnerable communities and children. It is wrong-headed because inadequate nutrition can lead to health and developmental problems that have high costs for all of us.

Cutting nutrition benefits to children will do absolutely nothing to “cut government waste.” In fact, taking money from children's food programs in order to fund tax cuts for billionaires and a mass deportation machine is economically wasteful as well as morally wrong.

Send a message to the Senate today telling them to reject a budget resolution that sets the stage for cuts to health care and nutrition programs to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, CHN Action

¹ 2025 Budget Stakes: Proposals Would Reduce Children’s Access to School Meals and Other Food Assistance
² 2025 Budget Stakes: Proposals Would Reduce Children’s Access to School Meals and Other Food Assistance
³ State-by-State Fact Sheets: Community Eligibility Provision
⁴ Food Security in the U.S. - Key Statistics & Graphics