Advocacy & Policy Updates
Pennsylvania State Budget
This week, Governor Shapiro presented his second budget address, outlining his proposed state budget for fiscal year 2024-2025. While this is just the first step in a multi-step process, Gov. Shapiro included some provisions that would support families experiencing food insecurity and help put food in reach for more Pennsylvanians, including:
Extending the existing universal free school breakfast program (which currently exists) for Pennsylvania children into the school year 2024-2025.
Increasing the minimum SNAP benefit from $23 to $35 for older adults and individuals with disabilities, at a total cost of $16 million.
$3 million to support the implementation of Summer EBT (S-EBT)
Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour effective January 1, 2025.
We’ve seen many of these proposals, including the minimum benefit increase and the minimum wage increase in the past several budget proposals. These have been, and remain important priorities to support Pennsylvanians experiencing food insecurity and we are grateful to Governor Shapiro for including these proposals and working to support Pennsylvanians experiencing food insecurity. However, with the exception of Universal School Breakfast, these proposals have failed to be included in the final budget. The time is now for the General Assembly to include these provisions in the final budget! Pennsylvanians need more than proposals, they need actions. We will be pushing the General Assembly to support these initiatives in the coming months and hope that you will join us. To get connected to our policy work, sign up for advocacy alerts.
Child Tax Credit Update
In our last newsletter we let you know about a newly proposed tax package that would expand the Child Tax Credit, lifting as many as 400,000 children above the poverty line in its first year. We are happy to report that on January 31, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act. It is now up to the Senate to pass this bill. It is crucial that the Senate not only pass the bill quickly, but also reject any harmful amendments that would weaken the Child Tax Credit provision. We will keep you up to date as this process develops!
