ACTION ALERT: Urge the House not to cut WIC funding in the upcoming appropriations bill!

ACTION ALERT: Urge Congress to fully fund the WIC program in the upcoming Farm Bill.

Congress is preparing to reauthorize the Farm Bill in 2023. Each reauthorization provides an opportunity to improve or expand programs that ensure access to fresh and healthy food while addressing root causes of hunger.

Governor-Elect Katie Hobbs has appointed Angie Rodgers to take over DES. The agency says thousands of Arizonans were overpaid unemployment benefits in the pandemic.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman announced last month that the Arizona Department of Education will allocate $6.75 million in pandemic relief funds to waive fees for students who qualify for reduced-price school meals starting in January.

Lawmakers have a limited window to pass an extension to the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which lapsed at the end of 2021. Last year, the strengthened tax credit helped cut childhood poverty from 9.7 to 5.2 percent! In a year of record inflation and economic uncertainty, the CTC expansion alone kept 2.9 million children out of poverty.

Faith Leaders Sign On by Friday, May 20: If Congress were to make the current $2,000 Child Tax Credit fully refundable and available to all low-income families, the number of children experiencing poverty would fall by an estimated 20 percent.

Food insecurity and poverty continue to affect families in the U.S. with young children who are the most vulnerable to hunger. A way to ensure children have the food they need to survive and thrive is to extend the expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC).

While the details of President Joe Biden’s signature social-spending bill are still being haggled over, one big takeaway is clear: the $1.75 trillion package marks a dramatic shift toward boosting support for families with children after decades of government benefits being skewed toward the elderly.

91 percent of families with low incomes (less than $35,000) are using their monthly Child Tax Credit payments for the most basic household expenses — food, clothing, shelter, and utilities — or education.

Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton and Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry of The Episcopal Church were at The White House last week advocating for children and families through a series of bills before Congress right now.

Sign on by Sept. 24. Faith leaders representing a broad variety of faith traditions in Arizona are called on to co-sign a letter to Sens. Kelly and Sinema to make Arizona and our nation more consistent with God’s mandate to care for the most vulnerable and particular concern for people living in poverty.

The USDA announced an update to the Thrifty Food Plan, which is used to set benefit levels for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This science-driven and long-overdue reevaluation will be welcome news for families across the country, many of whom will be better able to afford a healthy diet with greater SNAP benefits.

More than a year into a public health crisis that snowballed into a social and economic disaster, Baker was still among the 28 percent of households struggling to cover household expenses in July. She was still among the 11.5 million renters behind on her payments. She was still among the 1 in 7 parents struggling to feed their families. All this despite a raft of government interventions, the latest of which is an expanded child tax credit approved by Congress in March.

Senator Sherrod Brown, a Lutheran, Democrat, and US senator from Ohio, and Peter Edelman, faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, share an opinion about the child tax credit.

President Biden’s Covid-19 relief package is poised to bring a historic reduction in poverty rates, with nonmetro counties among the biggest beneficiaries.

The Children’s Defense Fund just released the latest version of their annual State of America’s Children report. The report compiles the latest data on a wide range of issues impacting children and highlights the ways in which COVID-19 has exacerbated these concerns.

A big part of the administration’s coronavirus relief package is focused on children. The president says he wants to expand the federal child tax credit, which gives families money for each child they have — or at least reduces their taxes. This change could help lift nearly 10 million children above the poverty line or get them closer to it.