Contact your member of Congress and urge them to pass legislation extending unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut without onerous restrictions today!

The time to urge members of Congress to protect jobless benefits is now. Cutting off unemployment insurance hurts our economic recovery and can have dire effects on families. Jobless workers across the country are doing all they can to keep their families afloat.

In early September, President Barack Obama proposed the American Jobs Act, a large-scale effort to create jobs, assist the long-term unemployed, and advance American competitiveness. Sharing the details with the American public before a joint session of Congress, President Obama highlighted a few of the ways the American Jobs Act would jump-start the economy, put people back to work, and put money in the pockets of American families.

Earlier this month, Congress passed a deal to raise the debt ceiling that included $1 trillion cuts over the next 10 years, and the creation of a bipartisan congressional “supercommittee” charged with finding another $1.2 to $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction by Thanksgiving.

With only a few days of negotiations left, now is the time to make your voice heard. Urge your senators and representative to uphold one key principle as they finalize a deficit reduction plan: Protect programs for low-income families and individuals and ensure deficit reduction does not increase poverty.

In late May the Senate took an important step in standing up for middle- and working-class families by voting against the Republican budget proposal, a draconian plan that sought to strip underserved communities of critical resources while providing millions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

Contact your senators today and ask them to protect the programs supporting low-income Americans in the debates over next year’s budget and reducing the national debt.

9to5, National Association of Working Women, in collaboration with FRESC for Good Jobs and Strong Communities, Colorado Progressive Coalition, and NAACP of Colorado Springs, is working hard to educate Coloradoans about the benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA.The groups worked together to organize multiple community forums on ARRA’s benefits, which also covered how to access specific educational and work programs and provided participants opportunities to take action for policy reform.

Half in Ten partner the Virginia Interfaith Center details how to participate in the “poverty diet,” a three-day, experiential learning program. Participants can spend no more than $4.23 per person per day (or $12.69 over the 3 day period) on food and beverage items.

As the budget battle over funding for the rest of this fiscal year rages on, House Republicans are already gearing up for the release of their budget proposal for fiscal year 2012. Not only will this proposal likely continue the troubling pattern of deep cuts to programs supporting vulnerable families and children but it will also likely propose to restructure some of these programs—a move that would negatively impact families, communities, states, and the overall economy.