Action steps
From February through June 2024, the Coalition is focused on securing funding in the FY25 Budget to continue state-funded food assistance benefits for the coming year.
On April 10th the House Ways and Means Committee released their FY25 proposed budget. They did not include any funding to continue the state-funded SNAP program. This program is scheduled to end THIS MONTH due to lack of funding.
Chairman Tony Cabral and Rep Judith Garcia have filed an amendment to the House Ways and Means budget to provide $30 million to continue this benefit, and also include low income legal permanent residents subject to a 5 year waiting period for federal SNAP. We need your help getting House members to co-sponsor the Cabral/Garcia amendment #247.
Action Steps
Contact your State Representative and ask them to co-sponsor Amendment #247 for state-funded SNAP.
Contact the co-sponsors of H.135 and S.73 and thank them for their co-sponsorship. Ask the House co-sponsors to sign onto the Cabral/Gracia amendment.
Check in with your local food pantries, find out if they are feeding immigrant-headed households, and urge them to join the campaign.
If your Representative signs on to the Cabral/Garcia amendment, post that on social media thanking them and urging them to ask House Leadership to adopt the amendment.
We encourage you to include in your letters individual stories or case examples as those are the most powerful. Here’s examples of testimony, examples of individual stories we've posted, research documenting the harm, and our FY25 Budget Fact Sheet with core talking points.
Questions? Email Pat Baker, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, at PBaker@mlri.org and Lina Tabar, La Colaborativa, at linat@la-colaborativa.org.