Demand Congress use its “power of the purse” to hold Trump accountable
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution says: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
The President of the United States does not have unlimited authority to decline congressional appropriations and decide what gets funded and by how much depending on his whims and which political adversaries he wants to punish.
By hijacking congressionally appropriated funds, Donald Trump and Elon Musk (and his unqualified, unscreened team) are yanking funding from people and programs in our communities―which will have a real impact on many of our neighbors as they face frozen funding for critical human needs programs that people rely on to survive.
Congress must stand up to stop this lawless power grab.
The pandemic is not over edition. Many Americans are acting as if the pandemic is over, and President Biden even said as much in a recent interview with 60 Minutes (although he later walked back his comments). And it is true that as of this moment, we are trending in the right direction – daily infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths are all significantly down; in some cases, the metrics reflect the pre-Delta days of late spring and early summer 2021 (another time when some thought the pandemic was winding down).
The Coalition on Human Needs on Tuesday, September 27, 2022 delivered a letter to all House members and Senators urging passage of a concurrent resolution to keep government funded through mid-December and to return to work on appropriations.
I have terrible chronic pain that’s left me unable to work for the last few years. I can’t sleep well, and every day is a battle just to take care of myself. It would be life-changing if I could be seen by a doctor. But I’m one of the 2 million Americans caught in what’s called the Medicaid coverage gap: we’re people in a no man’s land who can’t afford health insurance on their own, but aren’t eligible for their state or federal health insurance programs.
As my flight descended into San Juan, I was surprised and amazed to see what appeared to be hundreds and hundreds of swimming pools dotting the landscape of Puerto Rico’s capital. But as the airplane banked and descended further, and the landscape expanded outside my window, my amazement turned to horror and anguish: what appeared to be swimming pools, I now saw, were actually blue tarps, covering thousands and thousands of houses.
With under two months until online filing through GetCTC.org closes, recently-released data and reports paint a clear picture: the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) reduced hardship among families with children, and outreach remains critically important to ensure that all eligible families get this money.
Tuesday, September 20 marks the 10th anniversary of National Voter Education Day. This civic and nonpartisan holiday was created to help educate and unite the American people. Volunteers from all over the country flood busy college campuses, libraries, and workplaces to help people register or update their registration to vote.
The U.S. Census Bureau poverty data edition. This week brought us a trove of data related to the level of poverty in America. There is much good news to report, along with some bad, and along the way we have learned some important lessons about the ability of government to do good when it comes to lifting up our children and our families.
Every year, issues that directly impact people with disabilities, such as Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare are placed on the operating table, ready to be sliced up and examined. “Vote as if your life depends on it because it does,” says Justin Dart, Co-Founder of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). This statement can resonate with anyone but rings especially true for people with disabilities.
In 2021, families saw the benefits of federal investments in their well-being. The Child Tax Credit, improved nutrition assistance, and other benefits aimed at helping people cope with the economic dislocations of the pandemic worked to lift millions of people out of poverty. The Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes many federal benefits into account in calculating poverty rates, found that 9.6 million fewer people were poor because of low-income tax credits, and 8.9 million people were protected from poverty by the stimulus payments sent out. Other forms of assistance also lifted millions out of poverty, including SNAP and school lunch food aid (3.4 million) and housing subsidies (2.4 million).
CHN just released another edition of the Human Needs Report. Read on for a comprehensive update on the FY23 appropriations process, including highlights of what is happening in the Senate, along with news about the Inflation Reduction Act.
The back-to-school edition. Kids are returning to classrooms, but we find students, teachers, and schools themselves in a pandemic-related crisis. For students, the damage that has been done became more apparent than ever this past Thursday, September 1, when new data revealed just how big a hit students took academically during the pandemic’s first two years. New test results from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, often called the “nation’s report card,” showed students of all income levels and ethnicities on average fared much worse in early 2022 than they did in early 2020, just before the pandemic. But students from families with low incomes and Black and Hispanic students fared even worse.
