Urge Congress to Help Reduce Child Hunger with an Improved Child Tax Credit

Community Harvest has enjoyed ongoing support from our representation in Congress over the forty plus years we have been serving our great community. We find ourselves in a position to call upon them again, as a growing number of working families in our region cannot afford enough food and other basic needs. While no single measure will end hunger in our communities, a bipartisan expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) would help offset these families’ rising costs with additional economic resources.

This proposal would significantly reduce child poverty, as did a similar measure during the unprecedented rise in economic crisis during the pandemic, benefitting the 19 million children in the United States whose families currently receive partial or no credit due to their income being too low.

Once that policy expired, as did much of the economic relief given to families as pandemic recovery began, food insecurity increased to the highest levels we’ve seen since 2014. Around 60% of Feeding America food banks impacted the number of families seeking assistance, Community Harvest among them. While what’s being proposed is not a full return to that proven policy, it is a meaningful step in the right direction that highlights an opportunity for bipartisan unity in working together for the good of people in need.

We at Community Harvest witnessed both the aggressive, sudden rise in need caused by the economic uncertainty during the COVID-19 crisis, as we did the immediate impact of the CTC expansion on families in our area. Even in more stable times, children experience food insecurity at a higher rate than adults.

While currently we are dealing with the deeply concerning fact that 1 in every 7 people in our country experience food insecurity on a regular basis, that rate increases to an even more troubling 1 in 5 when talking about children. That means 20% of the children in this country go to bed hungry regularly, some of them every single night.

In our Community Cupboard on-site pantry, we’ve seen children with their families as they select foods from our shelves to take home, as children open cereal boxes and eat straight from the bag before they even leave the building because they are just so hungry. No child should ever be in that position, nor a parent have to make financial choices between feeding themselves, feeding their child, or keeping the electricity on, but for 1 in 5 children that is their reality.

As always, these sorts of federal investments fight hunger on two fronts – they help support Community Harvest and organizations like ours across the country in our mission to bring food to those in need, as well as providing support directly to families to keep them out of the lines for our programs to begin with.

Please consider reaching out to our representatives in Congress, at the offices of Representative Jim Banks, and/or Senators Todd Young and Mike Braun. Urge them to do the right thing and help bring congress together to help the American people by an expansion in CTC to help hungry children and their families across our great nation.

Thank you for your support.

U.S. Congressman Jim Banks: https://banks.house.gov/contact/

U.S. Senator Mike Braun: https://www.braun.senate.gov/contact/

U.S. Senator Todd Young: https://www.young.senate.gov/contact