Offering an ambitious alternative to the House GOP’s “morally bankrupt” 2019 budget proposal—which demands over $5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and other life-saving programs—the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that calls for massive investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education while proposing significant cuts to the completely “out-of-control” Pentagon budget.
Titled The People’s Budget: A Progressive Path Forward (pdf), the CPC’s plan also calls for a ban on “any expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and many other countries,” demanding an immediate end to “the policy of funding endless wars.”
“The electorate is looking for a new vision for the country and for foreign policy in particular,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, noted in a statement on Tuesday. “The People’s Budget embodies that new vision by investing in the interests of the people over the interests of the arms industry and the billionaire class.”
“The #PeoplesBudget would take the blank check for endless war off of the books.” – @RepBarbaraLee @USProgressives #EndEndlessWar pic.twitter.com/hMMiOpLd62
— Win Without War (@WinWithoutWar) July 24, 2018
Highlighting the Trump administration’s deeply inhumane immigration agenda—which has been a boon for the private prison industry—the CPC’s budget also calls for scaling back “exorbitant funding for immigration detention and enforcement; creating due process, fairness, and accountability in the system; and eliminating the profit motive in immigration detention.”
“As Trump pushes to ramp up excessive border spending and hire more border patrol agents, we’re saying no,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the First Vice Chair of the CPC, declared on Tuesday. “I just returned from the border and what I saw was heartbreaking—kids in cages, awful conditions, and continued family separation. We can’t keep funding this broken system.”
While the People’s Budget stands no chance of passing the Republican-dominated Congress, Jayapal noted that the CPC plan is a “moral document” aimed at articulating House Democrats’ vision and priorities for the months ahead.
In addition to calling for trillions of dollars in funding for healthcare and education, the People’s Budget also demands “more for our climate,” Jayapal notes.
Specifically, the budget calls for a complete elimination of corporate welfare for fossil fuel companies while proposing $2 trillion “to eliminate our lead-contaminated water system” and $80 billion in disaster aid relief for families and communities devastated by extreme weather, which has been worsened by the climate crisis.
As Trump pushes to ramp up excessive border spending and hire more border patrol agents, we’re saying no.
I just returned from the border and what I saw was heartbreaking—kids in cages, awful conditions and continued family separation. We can’t keep funding this broken system.
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) July 24, 2018
In contrast to Republican economic policies and budgets that have produced falling wages while deepening inequality, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found in an analysis on Tuesday that the People’s Budget would “improve the economic well-being of low- and middle-income families” by making badly needed public investments, allowing the government to negotiate drug prices, and bolstering the safety net.
“The People’s Budget invests in our neglected infrastructure, ends the systematic inequality in our tax system by making corporations pay their fair share, and stops the rising cost of drugs,” Public Citizen concluded on Twitter. “It’s time to put political and economic power back in the hands of the people. “
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 253 new monthly donors in the next 3 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy