For Immediate Release: May 28, 2021
Contact: Colleen Ross, [email protected], 202-601-7877
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NETWORK Lobby Welcomes President Biden’s Federal Budget
Laura Peralta-Schulte: “President Biden echoes Pope Francis, writing, ‘trickle-down economics has never worked.'”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice celebrates the release of a justice-oriented, values-based federal budget for FY2022 from President Biden. The President’s budget recognizes what is needed to create a modern economy that works for everyone—including rural areas, cities, and tribal communities.
NETWORK calls for federal spending and policies that build our systems and structures anew by dismantling systemic racism, cultivating inclusive community, rooting our economy in solidarity, and transforming our politics. President Biden’s budget proposal is a significant step in the right direction.
Laura Peralta-Schulte, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice’s Chief Lobbyist said:
“A budget is a reflection of our values, but past budgets have too often caused harm by underinvesting in our people and our communities. We at NETWORK know this from meeting and listening to families across the country who struggle to make ends meet every month or face impossible choices between paying for rent or paying for medicine.
“By funding affordable housing, including $900 million to address poor housing conditions in tribal areas; establishing a national paid leave program; creating a public option through the ACA marketplaces; investing in community policing and police reform; extending the enhanced child tax credit payments, and more, President Biden’s budget prioritizes those who are pushed to the margins by our current systems and structures. President Biden has made racial and gender equity a priority, and a key aspect is his proposal to restructure the tax code, finally rolling back many of the unjust and inequitable tax provisions of the 2017 tax law.
“In his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis says economic inequality ‘gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society.’ President Biden echoes Pope Francis, writing, ‘trickle-down economics has never worked’ in the introduction of this budget. Indeed, this budget addresses not only the economic struggles facing individuals and families, but also the divisions threatening the health of our society. President Biden’s budget directs our shared resources towards making real a new vision and a new life for our country, one that values just and inclusive community, where all people can flourish.”
NETWORK also encourages Congress and the Biden administration to reduce proposed funding levels for immigration enforcement and defense spending so that our shared resources are used to welcome and care for immigrants and asylum seekers, not to sustain inhumane detention facilities or further expand our already-massive military capabilities. Investing funds instead into our communities instead will allow us to build anew and create real human security.
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NETWORK, a national Catholic Social Justice lobby, which educates, organizes, and lobbies for economic and social transformation, has a nearly 50-year track record of lobbying for critical federal programs that support those at the margins and prioritize the common good.