Jennifer Miller and Heather Taylor: Congress must continue work to feed hungry children

Late last summer, the dedicated staff and volunteers who run church food pantries across our region noticed something was missing: families with kids.

The parents and grandparents who had relied on these pantries to feed their children throughout the pandemic had disappeared. They weren’t dropping in for bags of macaroni and cheese or peanut butter. They stopped coming to the food pantries altogether.

Where did these missing families go? For an all-too-brief period, they were at the grocery store instead.

It turns out that the pandemic relief measures approved by Congress in 2021 did exactly what they were designed to do: They lifted kids out of poverty. Thanks to initiatives such as the Child Tax Credit and the Pandemic EBT program, families across our region were able to feed their children with ease and dignity. Nationwide, these programs reduced childhood poverty by 30%.

But now, these critical programs have been eliminated. The families have come back to our pantries.

Most of us are happy to share what we have with our neighbors in need. But we have another responsibility, too: advocacy to create the structural change our country needs to prevent our neighbors from becoming poor in the first place. Our elected leaders must continue proven initiatives that end hunger.

For Christians, the bottom line comes in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 25, when Jesus tells us we will be judged on how we treated the most vulnerable among us: When people were hungry, did you feed them?

For millions who are poor in the U.S., hunger and food insecurity are often their experience, and shockingly, far too many are children: an estimated 443,550 kids in Pennsylvania alone.

In our commonwealth, we have been fortunate to be represented in Congress by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who has consistently supported programs that end hunger. His leadership helped bring us three important programs to keep hunger and poverty from rising during the pandemic: expanding child nutrition programs like free school meals, the Summer EBT Program and the Child Tax Credit.

The continuation and expansion of all three of these programs was proposed in President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. As leaders revise that proposal to bring it back to the Senate, it is imperative that these three programs are included in any such strategy.

First, Congress must expand the Community Eligibility Provision, which increases the number of schools offering free meals to all students at no charge. This provision would allow an additional 1,114 schools in Pennsylvania to provide free school meals to students.

But schools aren’t open year-round; when schools close, struggling families who struggle to put food on the table lose access to healthy free or reduced-price school meals for their children. The result is increased food insecurity among families with children. The Summer EBT Program would provide a $65-per-month grocery benefit on an electronic benefit card for the summers of 2023 and 2024.

Evaluations of Summer EBT have found that it reduces food insecurity and improves nutrition. Roughly 945,000 low-income children in Pennsylvania would qualify for Summer EBT benefits.

Finally, enacted in March 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act increased the Child Tax Credit and made it available through monthly payments for more than 65 million U.S. children — roughly 2.2 million children in Pennsylvania. The enhanced tax credit has enabled parents across the country to pay for food, clothing, housing and other necessities.

But Congress must maintain this progress. The last CTC payment went out Dec. 15, and many families are struggling once again to make ends meet. In Pennsylvania, 310,000 children are at risk of slipping back below the poverty line or deeper into poverty because the enhanced CTC monthly payments have ended.

Casey and Sen. Pat Toomey and Pennsylvania’s House delegation must do everything in their power to protect and advance these three programs. The families and children of this great nation need their leadership at this critical moment in time.

In the meantime, you’ll find us in the food pantry, serving our neighbors. You’ll also find us in the halls of Congress, working to ensure that our leaders will help hunger disappear: this time, for good.

Jennifer Miller is chief executive officer of the Westmoreland Food Bank. Heather Taylor is managing director of Bread for the World.