This is an editorial that there should be no reason to write.

Regardless, the editorial should not have to question why federal lawmakers who purport to fight for their district’s best interests are harboring so much silence — perhaps fear — about the issue that will be discussed here.

The issue is food, and every lawmaker should be committed to food availability, regardless of political party and under whose presidential administration a good program was launched.

Unfortunately, politics appears to have infiltrated a good, worthy food program covering 27 Central Pennsylvania counties, including Blair, and people here, to state it bluntly, ought to be “mad as hell.”

It is unlikely that there is sacrificing or cost cutting at the dinner tables of government officials, including the men and women elected to serve the people back home. Thus, government should not make it more difficult for people of poorer means to acquire, at a reasonable price, the food they need to maintain a healthy diet.

The fact is that a food program that is doing a good job should not be eliminated or gutted because it originated during a prior presidential administration, perhaps one of a different political party.

If something good isn’t broken, no one should be trying to “fix it” by undermining or destroying it. It makes no sense to impose additional hardship on people who already are hard-pressed to make ends meet and keep their table stocked with enough food to avoid hunger.

That is the message members of Congress representing Central Pennsylvania ought to be delivering in the Nation’s Capital — loudly, and without fearing political retribution, in response to the apparent loss of $1.8 million that had been scheduled to be allotted here over the next 15 months under the Local Food Purchasing Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program.

The Trump Administration has decided to cancel LFPA.

All considered, it is apropos to repeat and reflect upon several paragraphs in the Mirror’s May 7 front-page article dealing with the help the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank is seeking to reduce the negative impact of the $1.8 million loss of federal revenue. Those paragraphs are as follows:

“Every new presidential administration makes changes that the Harrisburg-based food bank must deal with, but in the case of the current administration, it has been ‘a lot and quickly,’ said food bank President and CEO-in-waiting Shila Ulrich on a visit Tuesday (May 6) to the food bank’s new regional hub in Hollidaysburg.

“The LFPA program was a Biden-era initiative that mirrored one from the Obama administration, providing money so food banks can buy ‘hyperlocal-sourced food’ from small- and mid-sized farms, providing fresh produce, meat and dairy products for the benefit of food bank clients, the farmers themselves and local economies, according to Ulrich.

“The LFPA cancellation leaves the food bank with ‘a lot of money to make up, according to Ulrich.’

Ulrich likened the work ahead to a “call to action.”

Meanwhile, food bank CEO Joe Arthur indicated that a solution to the kind of situation the food bank currently is dealing with will require structural changes and a national strategy that also involves state governments.

And here was probably the most important point he delivered: “The U.S. seems to have sufficient wealth to ensure that no one goes hungry.”

The $1.8 million in question is a drop in the proverbial bucket when stacked next to the benefits Central Pennsylvania could derive from those dollars.

Don’t accept the loss quietly.