Mableton Mayor Michael Owens, fourth from left, at Mableton City Council meeting (photo: Larry Johnson/Cobb Courier)

Mableton Mayor Michael Owens has joined the Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger.

The organization’s website has a counter that is now at 460 mayors nationwide. The organization’s focus currently is lobbying the U.S. Congress to continue funding for SNAP, the program that was formerly the food stamps program. SNAP was created to end food insecurity in the U.S.

The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, recent proposals from Republican and conservative think tanks have called for cuts in the program.

Here is the press release from the mayor’s office:

Mayor Michael Owens is part of a growing bipartisan movement of mayors from around the country asking Congress to protect funding for programs that ensure America’s children are fed.

Owens is one of 112 mayors to sign a letter opposing funding cuts to the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and school meal programs. The Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger, a nonpartisan coalition that represents more than 400 mayors across all 50 states and Washington, DC,  sent the letter to Congressional leaders Friday. The letter is in response to the budget passed in the U.S. House last week. The proposed budget could cut an estimated $230 billion from the SNAP program alone through 2034.

“These programs act as a lifeline for children and families that struggle with the most basic of needs,” emphasized Mayor Michael Owens. “Severe cuts could put the children in Mableton and other communities around Georgia and the country who depend on them at risk.”

According to Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, SNAP helps 41+ million Americans, including 1 in 5 children. 84% of SNAP households had at least one person working in the past 12 months. WIC helps more than 6 million people monthly, including 4 of 10 infants in the United States. Nearly 30 million students eat lunch at school, and 72 percent of those lunches are for students whose families qualify for free and/or reduced-price meals.

“The decision to cut funding for SNAP and other vital programs limits the options available to fight childhood hunger,” added Mayor Owens. “I urge our lawmakers to reconsider these cuts and how they could affect millions of American children.”

“Kids don’t know partisan lines,” said Mayor Paige Cognetti of Scranton, PA, who serves as Vice-Chair of the Mayors Alliance. “The solutions lie not just with mayors locally and with school districts and nonprofits, but they certainly lie in state legislatures and in our federal Congress. It’s incumbent upon the Mayors Alliance to remind our state legislatures, remind our congressional members that childhood hunger exists and that the solutions do matter at the state and federal levels.”

The proposed budget would have to pass the U.S. Senate before going to the President’s desk.

For more information, visit https://mayorshungeralliance.org/.