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.
Biden’s first year edition. As President Biden marks his first year in office, the pandemic continues to exert its toll on the nation’s health care system and economy and presents a significant challenge that the Biden Administration has worked to address since Inauguration Day. At the same time, as we assess the President’s first year, we can see there is much to celebrate. 2021 witnessed unprecedented growth and recovery – and it did not happen by accident. The country experienced record job gains and a historic drop in unemployment.
On January 15, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was leaving a planning meeting for the Poor People’s Campaign when he was called back into the room. It was his birthday — his last, it would turn out. The staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference would usually give King a new suit, but this year they wanted to make him laugh. Xernona Clayton teased, “We know how fond you are of our president Lyndon Johnson,” which got a laugh. Then she pulled out a metal cup engraved: “We are cooperating with Lyndon’s War on Poverty. Drop coins and bills in cup.”
For the past six months, more than 61 million children in roughly 36 million families across the U.S. have received a monthly payment of $250 or $300 per child. Today, some parents may be surprised – in a very bad way – to learn that the monthly payments have ended. Tax credits that would have landed in families’ bank accounts beginning Friday, January 14 won’t happen because the Senate could not agree to extend them.
Child care is one of the biggest expenses many families face — in much of the country, it can run higher than college tuition. Could a national child care program ease that burden? If the Build Back Better bill can be rescued, our country may get another opportunity to make a historic investment in our future.
The omnipotent omicron edition. Omicron is exploding and testing is falling woefully short. The U.S. is now averaging 610,989 cases a day – a record during the pandemic – and a 227 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations in some areas are rising sharply. When one digs deeply into the omicron numbers, there is both bad and good news to be mined.
Omicron is surging and the Build Back Better Act is stalled. Yet there is some really good news to report this holiday season: a record 13.6 million Americans have signed up for individual coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and that number is only going to increase over the next three weeks.
How wonderful it would be if this could be a letter of pure celebration – that we as a nation had progressed from urgently needed protections to investments to build our future. We are not there yet. But your unflagging commitment will get us there. We have to get there because so many of our neighbors are behind in their rent, struggling with low pay, still threatened by the pandemic, still fearful of losing family members to deportation or illness.
I work hard to make ends meet for my family. But as an educator in West Virginia, that’s hard sometimes — especially with child care to pay for. Fortunately, the expanded Child Tax Credit that Democrats passed this spring has been a lifeline. Those monthly payments mean that my child has food, a roof, electricity, and heat. It means I have less stress and can be a better mother. And it means I can stay employed because I can afford child care. Unfortunately, unless Congress passes the Build Back Better Act now, those payments will expire before the year is out.
After the U.S. House passed the Build Back Better Act, Ady Barkan knew the bill’s future likely would come down to the vote of one Senator: Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Barkan, a lawyer and progressive activist with a particular interest in home health care, decided to reach out to West Virginians and find out what they thought of the legislation. He then created a video of the responses and posted it on twitter. It has received more than 100,000 views. These are Barkan’s words and the responses he received.
The Coalition on Human Needs sent a letter to Sen. Joe Manchin this week urging him not to close the door on Build Back Better Act negotiations. “Senator Manchin, so much is at stake, affecting the economic security of your constituents and people nationwide,” the letter states. “Yes, we are facing serious threats from COVID and its continuing economic dislocations. But economists and the people of West Virginia are telling you that Build Back Better will help, without increasing inflation.”
The 61.2 million children get coal edition. This week, the U.S. marked two sad milestones. More than 50 million COVID-19 cases have now been confirmed since the pandemic began, and more than 800,000 people have died. The highly contagious omicron variant is here in the U.S. and is ricocheting through Britain and parts of Europe; on Thursday alone, Britain reported 88,376 new infections – the highest number since the pandemic began. “Omicron is spreading at a rate we have not seen with any previous variant,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a news briefing.
With time expiring in 2021, leaders in the U.S. Senate joined faith leaders this week for a Capitol Hill news conference to urge passage of the Build Back Better Act. Within a day, their quest grew more challenging, as President Biden and congressional leaders acknowledged they were not ready to enact this historic legislation before Christmas. The Senate will return on January 3, a week earlier than originally planned, to resume work on the bill.
