Billy Shore, founder and executive chair of the hunger organization Share Our Strength, is a resident of Kennebunkport and chair of Maine’s First County Foundation.

After more than 40 years fighting hunger, you wouldn’t think I’d be shocked when I discover it anew. After all, astronomers aren’t stunned when a new star is identified. Nor firefighters surprised by fires across town. But when I learned that in York County, where I live, a short drive from my Kennebunkport home, as many as 3,000 people a month need the services of an emergency food pantry, the scale of need astonished me.

Pulling into the food pantry parking lot in Alfred was an eye-opener. Dozens of seniors, disabled and moms with young kids waited patiently in cars for the doors to open. Maine’s beauty and many pleasures had lulled me into a kind of failure of imagination. In my role as executive chair overseeing the No Kid Hungry campaign of the national hunger organization Share Our Strength, I regularly bear witness to hunger, from New York to California, but rarely see it so close to home.

Unfortunately, more rural parts of Maine experience even greater hunger, making it the state with the highest rate of food insecurity in New England. Nationally, Maine is not the exception but the rule. Hunger and food insecurity are so pervasive in the United States that they have almost become normalized, to the detriment of needed public awareness.

The budget cuts in H.R. 1, which was signed into law on July 4, will do terrible damage to families living with hunger. My neighbors in Maine, and others I’ve come to know as a volunteer firefighter, are among the hardest working people I’ve met anywhere. But housing prices, the cost of food and gas and stagnant wages take their toll.

The consequences are far ranging. Hungry kids can’t learn. Compromising their education compromises their future. We can’t have a strong America without strong kids and families. In an increasingly dangerous world, that is truer than ever.

If there’s good news, it is that hunger in the U.S. is a solvable problem. We have no shortage of food or of effective food programs like school breakfast and school lunch, summer meals, SNAP (what used to be known as food stamps) and the Women, Infants and Children supplemental feeding program.

While there may be 41 million recipients of SNAP, all 340 million of us are beneficiaries of a program that feeds children and families, strengthens our schools and health care systems and yields massive economic benefit to countless American businesses.

Bipartisan support, rare these days on most issues, is strong for solving hunger. Share Our Strength’s Mayors Alliance to End Childhood Hunger found more than 520 mayors of all political persuasions eager to join. A new program to provide a grocery benefit for families with school-age kids home in the summer has seen support from Republican and Democratic governors, leading to enrollment from 37 states. It has already closed a huge portion of the summer hunger gap, from 3 million kids getting summer meals to now 18 million.

Five years ago, Maine led the way as one of the first of nine states to adopt universal free school meals. Maine also has many great nonprofit organizations working to alleviate hunger and deserving of support, including Full Plates, Full Potential, Good Shepherd Food Bank, Preble Street and Mainspring, just to name a few. But many are necessarily playing defense in the face of indiscriminate and short-sighted budget cuts. Even worse, the assault on vulnerable children goes far beyond cuts in food assistance.  Health insurance, vaccines, after-school education and many other supports are being taken away, even those that are efficient and effective.

As for what I observed in York County, County Manager Greg Zinser and the County Commissioners had the vision to keep the food pantry open when budget shortfalls threatened to close it.

In times like these we each bear responsibility for lifting up what works, for putting a spotlight in what unites rather than divides and helping to solve problems that are solvable. Childhood hunger in the United States is just such a solvable problem and Maine can lead the way.