On June 10th the Farm Bill cleared one big hurdle by being passed by the Senate but it has many more to go. The bill is now in the House of Representatives, where voting began today on a number of amendments that would slash SNAP and eliminate SNAP-Ed funding. These amendments would directly affect nutrition programs throughout our country.
Although it may seem like we were just talking about rallying behind the Farm Bill as it went up for vote in the Senate, the bill needs our help again in the House of Representatives. There was another Action Alert released by the Academy on June 11th urging members to contact their US House Representatives urging them to protect SNAP. Supporting this effort will only take minutes of your time but it has the capacity to affect thousands of lives. Below, you will find more information on how you can support our efforts to protect SNAP.
Here is how you can take action: Contact your US House Representative to tell them to Vote NO on amendment 101 (Huelskamp #151) that eliminates the SNAP Nutrition Education Program(SNAP-Ed), and amendment 102 (Southerland #101) that would further reduce funding to the SNAP-Ed program.
- Call – Click on the following link to look up your Congressman’s phone number OpenCongress.org<http://www.
opencongress.org/people/ >zipcodelookup - Email – Click on the following link to send your email, it takes only a few minutes. Please make sure you select a prefix for your name. http://www.eatright.org/
members/actioncenter.aspx - Tweet – To Tweet your member of Congress, visit http://www.tweetcongress.org/
officials/tweeting to find members’ twitter handles. Please feel free to use the following sample tweets:
- @representative, Vote for a #FairFarmBill that fully protects #SNAP and #SNAPEd. America can’t afford not to feed its hungriest families.
- @representative, #SNAPEd works! A #FairFarmBill puts the healthiest foods on the tables of those who need it.
We got the Farm Bill through the Senate, but now it’s time to protect it as it moves through the House. The Academy is urging all members to maintain a watchful eye on any and all Action Alerts that are released over the next few months. This is not a one-time call to action. The Farm Bill is going to need our ongoing support!