Rasco From RIF

President Obama Approves FY09 Funding for RIF

March 17th, 2009

Announcing great news for Reading Is Fundamental: President Obama signed HR 1105, the Omnibus Appropriations Act 2009, and it not only includes RIF’s funding but actually includes an increase of almost $200,000 over our current year level of $24.6 million! What exciting news considering this time last year RIF was OUT of the proposed budget!

My sincere thanks to all “Friends of RIF” who supported the FY09 Save RIF’s Funding campaign by writing notes, making calls, talking to congressional members, conducting children’s letter drives, delivering materials to district offices, or just spreading the word to family members, neighbors, and friends. Working together, we waged a highly successful budget campaign that will allow us to continue providing high quality books and services to the millions of children and families in our RIF programs.

However, there is truly “no rest for the weary” or even time to think we are weary as the FY10 budget campaign is underway. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, this year’s campaign theme is “RIF: Give 10 for ’10.” We are asking that you take 10 minutes to visit RIF’s Advocacy Center and send e-mails to your members of Congress asking them to sign the House and Senate Dear Colleague letter in support of RIF’s funding for fiscal year 2010. It’s quick and simple! And I also ask that you think of 10 persons to whom you can forward the information about sending messages to Congress for RIF. As we all learned again from the FY09 budget campaign, messages from constituents can make quite a difference in securing our funding. ACT NOW because our Dear Colleague letter is currently circulating on Capitol Hill.

Let’s all celebrate a successful FY09 budget campaign and go to work now for an equally successful FY10!

Carol

Filed under: RIF Advocacy, RIF Government Relations

Tags: Advocacy, Budget, Obama, President