The People's Budget: A Roadmap For The Resistance FY 2018

Americans are facing a pivotal moment: Republicans are preparing massive cuts to our public schools, affordable health care, clean air and water, and family-sustaining jobs. A serious alternative that protects our communities and our planet has never been more urgent.

The People’s Budget: A Roadmap for the Resistance provides a practical, progressive vision for our country by investing in 21st century infrastructure and jobs, tackling inequality, making corporations pay their fair share, and strengthening essential public programs. The People’s Budget will put millions of Americans back to work and will guarantee a strong economy for generations tocome.

Public investment in 21st century infrastructure built with American parts and labor creates jobs that cannot be outsourced, while improving the health of our children and the environment. The People’s Budget invests $2 trillion in order to transform our fossil-fuel energy system, overburdened mass transit, deteriorating schools, lead- contaminated water systems, and crumbling roads and bridges. Through local hiring and livable wages, our infrastructure plan creates millions of dignified jobs for women and men of all backgrounds in both urban and ruralAmerica.

In order to make these bold, necessary investments in working families, we must rewrite the rules of a rigged economy that favors billionaires and big corporations. Our budget closes tax loopholes that corporations use to ship jobs overseas, and stops CEOs from receiving millions in tax-free bonuses. Our budget tackles inequality through fair tax rates for all Americans, leveling the playing field for working people.

Quality health care, child care, schools and retirement for everyone: these are the pillars of a democratic society. And yet in the world’s richest country, these essentials are painfully out of reach for tens of millions of our fellow Americans. The People’s Budget funds universal child care, increases access to health care, strengthens public schools and universities, provides for humane immigration reform, and expands Social Security. The People’s Budget also lowers the price of prescription drugs so that families don’t have to choose between paying for medicines or their groceries. The People’s Budget ensures that Veterans Affairs will not be privatized and that veterans receive the quality care and robust benefits they were promised for their service to the country.

The Republican agenda drastically cuts federal protection for working families, the environment and our health care, while giving massive tax cuts to big corporations and bloating the military budget beyond belief. The People’s Budget reinvests in American families, prioritizing funding for education, health care, jobs and clean air and water. The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s People’s Budget: A Roadmap for the Resistance puts political and economic power back in the hands of the people.

• Invests $2 trillion to transition to a 21st Century Infrastructure to transform our energy, water and transportation systems
• Closes loopholes so our government agencies use materials made in America
• Expands our commitment to efficient renewable energy and green jobs
• Invest $100 billion to increase access to reliable, high-speed internet

• Maintains critical coverage gains under Affordable Care Act
• Lowers costs of prescription drugs
• Allows states to transition to single-payer health care systems
• Expands access to mental health care and treatments for opioid and heroin addiction
• Repeals excise tax on high-priced health care plans for workers and replaces with public option

• Ends corporate tax break for offshoring American jobs and profits
• Stops companies from renouncing their American citizenship to dodge U.S.taxes
• Closes wasteful corporate tax loopholes that cost billions of dollars
• Taxes Wall Street to fund MainStreet
• Ensures profits from investments are finally taxed at the same rate as income taxes
• Raises revenue from the wealthiest few who can afford to pay more
• Expands the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child CareCredit

• Ensures the justice system is fair and effective for all Americans by increasing funding for voter protection and legal assistance programs
• Rebuilds trust in the justice system by developing community-oriented policing reforms
• Protects American election systems from any interference and increases protections for voting rights by strengthening key election reforms
• Funds public financing of campaigns to curb special interest influence in politics
• Supports policies and initiatives to significantly reduce gun violence

• Delivers on the promise of lifting working families up by investing $1 trillion in effective early learning opportunities and for a childcare for all program
• Makes debt-free college a reality for all students
• Greater investments in K-12 education
• Increases computer science opportunities for all students
• Allows refinancing of student loans
• Fully funds IDEA and provides Pre-K for all

• Supports a minimum wage increase and collective bargaining rights
• Provides a plan to reduce poverty by half in ten years
• Increases discretionary funding to invest in women, communities of color and their families
• Provides an increase in Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers
• Strengthens the Small Business Administration’s ability to provide support to America’s small business owners
• Addresses the pay equity gap

• Implements comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship
• Prohibits funding for construction of any border wall and any immigration policies which seek to ban people from entering the U.S. because of their religion
• Supports continued funding to sanctuary cities

• Fully funds programs to make housing affordable and accessible for all Americans
• Invests $12.8 billion to end family homelessness

• Closes tax loopholes and ends subsidies provided to oil, gas and coal companies
• Identifies a price on corporate carbon pollution
• Invests in clean, renewable, and efficient energy and green manufacturing

• Eliminates veterans’homelessness
• Increases access to mental health care for all veteran and servicemembers
• Invests in job training opportunities for transitioning service members and veterans

• Modernizes our defense system to create sustainable baseline defense spending
• Ends emergency funding for Overseas contingency operations
• Increases funding for diplomacy and strategic humanitarian aid
• Adds robust funding for refugee resettlement programs