Category Archives: Government Funding

After the Budget Bill: What’s at Stake for Our Common Home — and How We Respond

After the Budget Bill: What’s at Stake for Our Common Home — and How We Respond

Drake Starling
July 18, 2025

From the coasts of California to the coalfields of Appalachia, from Midwestern farms to Gulf Coast towns, families across the country want the same things: clean air, safe water, a livable planet, and a future full of opportunity. That’s why, in 2022, communities of faith and frontline advocates alike came together to help push the historic Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) across the finish line—bringing with it groundbreaking investments in clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resilience.

But now, much of that progress is on the chopping block. The budget reconciliation bill that just narrowly passed in Congress rolls back key provisions of the IRA, gutting investments in clean energy, rescinding funds for frontline communities, and stalling the just transition we’ve fought for. Why? Because the Republican lawmakers who backed this bill chose to prioritize the profits of fossil fuel executives over the well-being of their constituents. This bill isn’t about fiscal responsibility—it’s about letting polluters off the hook.

In the wake of Congress passing the budget reconciliation bill, we at NETWORK are reflecting on the devastating toll this legislation takes on our environment — and the people and communities who bear the brunt of environmental harm. We know the true cost of this bill: polluted air, unsafe water, and a dangerous step backward in the fight to protect our climate.

A Blow to Clean Energy and Creation Care

The budget reconciliation bill strips away billions in clean energy investments that were once made possible through the historic Inflation Reduction Act. These investments supported wind and solar energy projects, domestic clean manufacturing, and affordable electricity for millions of families. Now, with clean energy tax credits rolled back and critical funding rescinded from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, we face the chilling prospect of stalled innovation and rising energy costs, especially for low-income households.

Clean Water Under Threat

The reconciliation bill also rescinds funds meant to improve water infrastructure and protect communities from toxic pollution. The backers of this bill gutted grants to replace lead pipes, clean up PFAS contamination, and address long-standing water inequities in marginalized communities. This decision endangers public health and disproportionately harms communities of color, Tribal nations, and rural families already facing unsafe drinking water.

Sacrificing Clean Air for Corporate Polluters

Perhaps most abhorrent is the bill’s attack on clean air. The bill’s backers slashed the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and eliminated programs designed to reduce carbon emissions and monitor air pollution near schools and ports. They also weakened enforcement of the methane emissions fee—a critical tool for reducing one of the most potent greenhouse gases—and offered new giveaways to fossil fuel CEOs under the guise of “permitting reform.”

Our Faith Calls Us to Respond

At NETWORK, we believe in a government that protects the dignity of all people and cares for our Common Home. The decisions made in this budget bill are not just policy choices — they are moral choices. Pope Francis was clear: “The climate crisis is not merely an environmental issue; it is a social issue.” But once again, the lawmakers voting for this bill were willing to sacrifice our communities—our health, our economic stability, and our futures—all in the name of profit and corporate greed.

What We’re Doing Now

We’re not standing idly by. In response to this dangerous legislation:

  • We are mobilizing our faith partners to act boldly, including through writing op-eds and letters to the editor and holding district meetings with lawmakers who supported these cuts.
  • We are defending what’s left of the Inflation Reduction Act by lobbying Congress to protect and restore funding for clean energy tax credits, energy efficiency programs, and environmental justice initiatives.
  • We are educating our supporters and all people of goodwill through webinars, briefings, and faith-based materials that explain what’s at stake — and how our Catholic values compel us to act.
  • We are building coalitions with environmental, labor, and faith-based partners to resist further rollbacks and to demand a just transition to a clean energy economy that centers workers and frontline communities.

This moment is difficult, but it is not the end. We are grounded in hope, fueled by faith, and committed to justice. Together, we will continue to advocate for policies that protect creation and promote the dignity of all people.

NETWORK Lobby's blog ends with an image that reads Act Boldly, Act UrgentlyTake Action

Contact your elected officials. Tell them that slashing climate, clean air, and clean water funding is unacceptable. Urge them to reject future rollbacks and to support legislation that heals both people and the planet.

Because justice demands it. And faith compels it.

Present Day Trauma and Old Wounds

Present Day Trauma and Old Wounds

We Need Solidarity Across Communities to Counter the Horrors of the Budget Bill’s Immigration Provisions

Joan F. Neal
June 26, 2025

In responding to the budget reconciliation bill now expected to pass the U.S. Senate this week, NETWORK and Sisters around the country have focused much attention on the calamitous cuts to health care and food programs in the bill, especially as they would go to tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals in the country. This is a worthy focus, given the millions of people whose lives are threatened by this disastrous bill.

Sadly, this is only part of the story. NETWORK has also called attention to the $150 billion this bill allots to terrorizing our communities through scaled up immigrant detention and deportation efforts. The horrific policies and actions under this Administration have drawn much attention in the media.

One recent example is the viral video of Narciso Barranco, a California gardener, being beaten by agents as they arrest him. One of his sons, a Marine who put his life on the line for our country, says he is heartbroken and betrayed. While this violence is happening to specific families, the shockwaves it sends through our communities are palpable. It is also intergenerational. Clearly, we need to realize that no individual, family or community is safe when this level of unchecked militarization descends upon us at such an expanded scale.

For Black people in the U.S., images of masked and armed men snatching people off the streets and disappearing them evoke another horrific chapter in U.S. history, one that is still discernable in the rear-view mirror. Neighbor turned on neighbor along racial lines. There was vigilante justice against the Black community, and, just like today, people were afraid to live their daily lives. The impacts on our communities are comparable in terms of the terror and trauma they spread.

Across the U.S., we should feel real pain watching neighbors, coworkers, friends, and families—including those with legal residency in the U.S.—being hauled away from their homes, workplaces, and loved ones. We need to lean into this empathy and let it draw us into action. Solidarity is our salvation.

We have mustered this widespread solidarity before, the most recent and far-reaching example being the Civil Rights movement, which saw white people—including many Catholic Sisters and clergy—joining protests and marches to decry racial segregation and the denial of civil rights, voting rights, fair housing and more, to Black people – U.S. citizens. The Civil Rights movement is an example of how solidarity across communities can work to counter systemic injustice and lead to societal transformation. This is a lesson we should all remember at this time of turmoil.

So as we act together in resistance to the current push to pass the ‘big, bad’ budget reconciliation bill, we cannot lose sight of the human cost of this terrible, unjust piece of legislation that will provide billions of dollars to continue the violent assaults on immigrants while slashing essential programs for all people across the country who need assistance. Rather, we must once again come together in solidarity so that none of us, no matter who we are, react to the harm of another person without empathy. We must acknowledge that we are all one, human family without exception—as residents of this country, as members of communities, as children of God—and act accordingly.

We shouldn’t need horrors such as these ICE raids or devastating cuts to essential programs to remind us of this oneness, but here we are. Thankfully, protests and other actions in recent weeks have shown encouraging signs that we are still capable of recognizing our shared humanity. Let us pray and act so that these acts of solidarity continue.

Use NETWORK’s Budget Reconciliation Toolkit to take part in our advocacy against this bill.

Lent Week 8: Easter’s Promise of Thriving for All

Lent 2025: Giving Up Billionaires


Welcome to the eighth and final week of our Lenten series, “Giving Up Billionaires,” as we call on Congress to give up billionaires so our communities can have what we need to thrive. Click here for the rest of our Lenten reflections and actions.

We Can Give Up Billionaires and Enjoy Abundance!

 

Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP
April 23, 2025

We are an Easter people!

Together, over the course of Lent, we explored how all of us suffer when some lawmakers allow their billionaire backers to evade taxes and hoard wealth. We also examined how all of us will thrive, with affordable health care, stable housing, nourishing food, and inclusive politics, when we ensure that the ultra-wealthy pay what they owe our society in taxes.

We are Black, Brown, and white. Young and old. Gay, straight, and anything in between. We all want to live in safety, to have enough food to eat and a roof over our heads, and to be able to provide for our families and loved ones. We believe in a world where everyone has what they need. That’s why we’re taking action throughout the U.S.–forming advocacy groups, protesting cuts to the programs our communities rely on, taking care of each other with mutual aid, and more.

And it is precisely in this sharing that we generate abundance.

Sharing creates abundance. That’s what billionaires fail to recognize. That’s what capitalism prevents many of us from seeing. 

But we know that when we share resources, when everyone pays their fair share in taxes, we can all thrive. We can all enjoy having enough healthy food to eat, a safe neighborhood to live in, access to quality healthcare, and a good education. Grounded in the resurrection, we dare to hope and work together to make this future a reality.

We’ve done it before. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the highest top marginal tax rate was above 90%. Almost nobody paid that tax rate, and nobody paid that rate on their whole income. But it generated a thriving middle class for white families. Just imagine our shared prosperity when we reject billionaires’ attempts to divide us by race, faith, or class, and come together so all of us can thrive, no exceptions!

Thank you for joining us throughout Lent as we reflected and took action for a country where resources are for sharing, not hoarding, and as we told Congress: Give Up Billionaires for Lent, and forever!  

With all of us here at NETWORK, I wish you a joyful Easter!

 

NETWORK has more shareable content, sample social media posts, and LTE guidance for you in our Lent Toolkit.

Emily TeKolste, SP, NETWORK bio

Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP is NETWORK’s Grassroots Mobilization Coordinator. To read more, check out her column in Global Sisters Report, “The existence of billionaires is immoral.”

Introducing NETWORK’s 2025 Climate Portfolio

Building An Economy for All Means Protecting Our Common Home

Drake Palmer Starling
April 22, 2025, Earth Day

Today is Earth Day! As we celebrate Earth Day and look to the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ on May 24, join NETWORK’s Senior Advocate for Energy and Environmental Policy Drake Starling with reflections on our work for a healthy environment. We know that An Economy for All is a sustainable economy—one that ensures clean air and safe water, clean energy jobs, and healthy communities for all of us.

Earth Day time now for clean airFor decades, NETWORK has advocated for an economy that allows all of us, no matter our background, to thrive. But thriving doesn’t just mean fair wages, good jobs, or affordable housing. It also means clean air to breathe, safe water to drink, and land that sustains life, not poisons it.

The same ultra-wealthy actors who exploit workers and rig our economy are the same ones who pollute our air, water, and land. Big Oil and mining corporations exploit our common home for profit, and then use those profits to back politicians who will allow them to keep extracting profits and passing the costs of their destruction onto the rest of us. They poison our communities—especially low-income neighborhoods, communities of color, rural towns, and Indigenous lands—leaving us with a legacy of illness, environmental devastation, and economic hardship.

As people of faith, we know this is immoral. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis reminds us that “the environment is on loan to each generation, which must then hand it on to the next.” We have a sacred duty to protect creation, to act in solidarity with the workers and families most affected by environmental harm, and to ensure clean air, water, and land for all of us. That’s why NETWORK has joined communities across the country in the work for a healthy climate, clean energy, and environmental justice.

Coming Together for Clean Air, Safe Water, and Healthy Land

This year, our advocacy will focus on three policy areas that intersect with ecological and economic justice. Our climate portfolio for the 119th Congress covers three key priorities:

    1. Clean Air and Safe Water. From oil refineries to industrial waste, pollution doesn’t fall evenly on all communities. Historically, corporations have intentionally built polluting factories and toxic waste facilities in low-income and Black and Brown neighborhoods, often leaving them with toxic air, undrinkable water, and higher rates of asthma and cancer. We’re pushing for stronger Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations to curb pollution, hold corporate polluters accountable, and ensure clean air and water for all of us.
    2. Healthy Land and Creating New Clean Energy Jobs No matter where we live, we all want safe, clean, and well-paying jobs, and we all value being able to choose to power our homes with clean energy. The time is now to make the U.S. clean energy dominant, and in a way that is just. Mining reform, responsible public land use, and protections for communities impacted by polluting and dirty industries must be at the heart of becoming clean energy dominant. We are advocating for investment in clean energy, so that we can all enjoy fresh air and healthy land and create a sustainable economy with hundreds of thousands of good, clean energy union jobs.
    3. Investing in People, Not Polluters The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) created historic investments in clean energy jobs, tax credits for families, and communities across the country — from funding new solar panel manufacturing plants in Georgia and wind energy projects in Texas, to providing up to $7,500 in tax credits for families buying electric vehicles, and delivering grants to low-income communities to replace lead pipes and improve energy efficiency in public housing. Since its passage in 2022, the IRA has spurred over 330,000 new clean energy jobs across the United States, with projections estimating the creation of more than 1.5 million additional jobs by 2030. But fossil fuel corporate executives and their paid lobbyists are trying to weaken these investments so they can cash in on taxpayer money instead. We are working to ensure these investments benefit us ordinary people and our communities—not ultra-wealthy polluters.

 

Our Shared Values Define Our Advocacy

Fossil fuel executives and the lawmakers they fund want us to believe we have no say in our future—but we know better. Faith-filled justice-seekers have always been at the heart of movements for the healthy environment we deserve. We won landmark protections like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, we set national water quality standards, and we passed the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest climate investment in U.S. history.

An economy that works for all of us can only be a sustainable, clean energy economy. The same faith that calls us to build An Economy for All calls us to be stewards of creation and ensure a livable planet for all. We are answering that call—together.

To find out more about NETWORK’s full climate portfolio and the issues we are working on to create a more sustainable planet, please visit our sister site, NETWORK Advocates.