MEREDITH DODSON

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN is concerned about attacks on the basic needs and civil rights of D.C. residents. We also oppose efforts to undermine the ability of D.C. to self-govern through attacks on local democratic institutions or laws approved by D.C. voters. Ultimately, CHN supports statehood for the people living in the District of Columbia. We echo the concerns of others that attacks against D.C. are a worrying sign of federal overreach, which threaten democracy itself along with the fundamental principle of self-governance. D.C.s nearly 700,000 residents continue to be uniquely vulnerable to Congressional and federal overreach, exemplified by the bills before you this week. As a diverse and vibrant city, we are concerned that the bills before you this week overcriminalize D.C. residents, including youth, disproportionately harm Black and Brown communities, and fail to make our neighborhoods safer.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports a federal budget that invests deeply in community safety in thriving, including through three pillars that anchor this evidence-based agenda - community-based models for resolving crises, investments in the social determinants of safety, and new institutions that treat safety as a matter of public health. CHN supports comprehensive community violence intervention (CVI) strategies that reduce violence through education, outreach, and support services. These initiatives engage community members, provide conflict resolution training, and promote positive relationships among residents - creating a safer environment for all people. Investments should center fully community-based models, including models that focus on youth. CHN supports the development of civilian-led crisis response (mobile crisis response) teams that can effectively address emergency situations without the need for police intervention. These teams are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health first aid, and community support, ensuring that individuals in crisis receive appropriate care and assistance. CHN supports promoting economic equity by creating job opportunities and backing youth employment initiatives - especially summer jobs, which have been shown to be extremely effective at reducing youth arrests for violent crime. This includes enhancing job availability and quality through skill development programs, job opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals, apprenticeship opportunities, and ensuring access to affordable, high-quality childcare, which enhances financial stability now and reduces crime in the long-run. CHN supports investments in infrastructure that can administer community safety grants to fund evidence-informed interventions that treat safety as a public health issue, thereby ensuring that these programs have the requisite expertise to support non-carceral, preventative safety approaches. CHN supports prohibiting the transfer of military weapons, vehicles, and tactical equipment from the Department of Defense to state and local law enforcement, such as the 1033 program while increasing oversight and accountability over police departments and other carceral systems.

CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports expanding access to affordable broadband and phone service to reach households in every part of the U.S., including remote, rural, and low-income communities. These services are essential to connect people to benefits, jobs, education, healthcare, justice, and civic engagement. Connection to the internet is a necessity for all people to be full participants in the U.S. economy and to gain access to information that is essential in a democracy.

The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any changes to SNAP that will cut program benefit allotments, remove participants from the program through restrictive changes, expand time limits, transfer federal responsibilities to the states, or privatize SNAP administration. CHN opposes any changes to the overall structure, benefit level, eligibility, access to, administration of, or definition of SNAP as an anti-hunger program. CHN opposes any policy change that would make SNAPs existing harsh work requirements even more stringent, incentivize states to place barriers to SNAP access for those in need, or require states to fund replacement benefits. CHN also advocates for timely distribution of SNAP benefits, using reserve funds as necessary. CHN supports a Farm Bill that protects SNAP as a key tool to ending hunger, reduces economic inequality, bridges the nations racial divides, confronts the climate crisis, improves nutrition and food safety, and protects and supports farmers, workers, and communities. CHN support including supports for families along with farmers in any Agricultural legislation, including Emergency Supplementals. CHN supports efforts to strengthen and expand access to WIC, investing robustly in the programs unique position at the intersection of food security and public health to address inequities in maternal health and child nutrition, while also ensuring adequate funding to serve all eligible individuals. CHN supports efforts to protect, strengthen, and expand universal school meals, CACFP, and Summer EBT. CHN supports efforts to protect the integrity of the nutrition standards of the child nutrition and school meal programs and WIC by relying on the scientific recommendations of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). CHN supports adequate and anticipated-need funding for all food and nutrition programs during the annual appropriations process - including WIC, NAP, TEFAP, GusNIP, CSFP, FDPIR, Older Adult Nutrition Programs, and the emergency food and shelter programs. Fully funding these programs is vital to ensure the continuum of federal nutrition programs and the charitable food system can effectively and efficiently serve those in need. CHN opposes the termination of food insecurity measurements and federal staffing changes that threaten administration of federal nutrition programs.

CHN opposes large increases in funding that go to wasteful Pentagon contractors and private prisons used for detention and family separation, and come at the expense of programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and education programs. CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list).

CHN opposes cuts to human needs programs, including TANF and the Social Services Block Grant. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool programs. CHN opposes proposals that will make higher education costs will go up. This includes taking away the most affordable student loan repayment plan, costing the typical college graduate almost $3000 more per year in loan payments; taking away access to federal student loans from many graduate students, effectively cutting off access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness for most public service workers with a graduate degree; and taking away protections for defrauded students, making it easier for predatory colleges to scam students and get away with it. CHN opposes dismantling income-driven repayment plans which leave borrowers with expensive, inflexible loan payments. Eliminating these programs would disproportionately affect public servants and overburdened borrowers, including Black women, who hold the highest average student loan debt. Veterans and disabled borrowers eligible for loan discharge would also be impacted. Without these protections, millions of families could be pushed into financial hardship, deepening economic disparities. CHN opposes tax policies that undermine public K-12 education by creating a new, national voucher program. Its an attack on public education that would give away billions of federal taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers instead of directing resources to the public schools that 90% of American children attend, undermining overall investments in public education. CHN opposes policies that take away rights and protections that students are guaranteed at public schools, such as the rights for students with disabilities included in the IDEA. CHN opposes dismantling of the Department of Education, including the use of Interagency Agreements to transfer education programs, and mass firings of thousands of staff.

CHN opposes cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. CHN opposes proposals that make it hard to exempt people with serious and complex health conditions from Medicaid work reporting requirement. CHN opposes increased paperwork burdens and reverification requirements that could lead to eligible people losing health coverage. CHN supports making home- and community-based services a mandatory component of Medicaid. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports legislation to protect employees exercising their labor rights, including increased protections for workers engaging in strikes or peaceful protest actions, increased access to the court system for workers seeking justice for violations of their rights, and increased penalties for employers that violate workers rights. CHN supports robust policies and adequate funding to enforce workplace protections such as the right to minimum wage and overtime pay, child labor laws, healthy and safe workplaces, and equal opportunity and equal treatment, as well as legislation to enhance workplace safety, such as preventing heat illness, addressing workplace violence, and protecting state and local government workers and other workers from health and safety hazards. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any federal action that would erode worker protections, including the right to organize, to receive fair wages, to work in healthy and safe workplaces, to be whistleblowers, and to be free from discrimination. CHN opposes any federal action, including in the courts that would weaken public sector unions by prohibiting them from collecting fees from nonmembers to cover the basic costs that the union incurs representing them. CHN opposes any efforts to roll back legal protections and agency enforcement efforts addressing pregnancy discrimination. CHN opposes politicizing the federal government and state-level workforce administering federal benefits by eliminating civil service protections for large numbers of career employees. CHN opposes turning back the clock on federal minimum wage and overtime protections, including for home care workers. CHN opposes immigration enforcement actions that undermine the enforcement of labor, health and safety, anti-retaliation and other employment laws. CHN supports legislative actions that will curb misclassification of employees as independent contractors. CHN supports legislative actions to secure full employee rights for workers currently excluded from federal labor law protections, including domestic workers, farmworkers, day laborers, in-home child care providers and others. CHN supports legislative actions that will curb employers abuse of immigrant workers. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

The Coalition on Human Needs works to protect Congressionally approved funds from being frozen or rescinded by including enforceable instructions on how Congressionally approved funding must be spent, along with extending expiring funding to stop efforts to run out the clock. CHN has urged Congress to collectively assert their role and recognize that a deal is a deal - without the assurance that bipartisan spending legislation is adhered to, Congress is effectively giving up its Constitutional power of the purse. CHN supports including enforceable instructions (similar to the guardrails in S.2882) on how congressionally approved funding must be spent in any spending package, along with extending expiring funding to stop efforts to run out the clock, in any and all spending packages.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports access to fair, safe and affordable financial products and services and effective consumer protections so that consumers can build assets and lead successful financial lives. CHN opposes practices that are unfair, deceptive, discriminatory or abusive or that undermine economic stability. CHN supports reforming the financial system built on inequality to advance policies that support wealth-building in Black, Latino and other communities that are disproportionately impacted by wealth extraction and discriminatory practices that bar access to the financial system in order to close the racial wealth gap. CHN supports efforts to advance racial justice and equity in the financial market, and CHN opposes discriminatory lending and financial services practices and policies that directly or indirectly perpetuate exclusion and segregation. In addition, CHN supports federal legislation to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination to ensure that future Administrations do not exclude LGBTQ people from protections against discrimination on the basis of sex. CHN opposes predatory lending (lending that is unaffordable or leads to a cycle of debt), and financial products and services that amplify inequality by targeting lower-income and vulnerable families and communities including communities of color with exploitative prices and fees or high interest rates. CHN supports vigorous enforcement of fair lending laws CHN opposes predatory conduct in higher education, that causes students to enroll and take on unaffordable student loan debt to attend low-value programs. CHN opposes cutting or privatizing Social Security or otherwise replacing some or all of Social Security benefits with private accounts. CHN supports a 36% federal interest rate cap that covers all lenders and types of credit, with a lower rate cap for larger loans, and opposes measures that enable high-cost lenders to evade federal or state lending laws and interest rate limits, and. CHN supports rules and other efforts to ensure access to safe, fair, affordable and sustainable mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, student loans, small dollar loans and other forms of credit. CHN supports efforts to ensure access to financial services for immigrants, including borrowers with limited English proficiency, and to provide opportunities for consumers to receive and provide information in consumers preferred language. CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service. CHN supports reforms to stop abusive overdraft fee practices and to protect consumers from overdraft and other excessive or inappropriate fees. CHN supports transparency, free access to account information, and competition and fairness in banking and transaction services. CHN supports effective measures to resolve disputes, errors or unauthorized charges and to control who accesses consumers accounts. CHN supports greater consumer protections for people who have been defrauded or hacked, efforts to prevent and remedy fraud, measures to ensure that both newer and longstanding payment methods are safe, and effective remedies for consumers who have been harmed. CHN supports measures to protect consumers with respect to crypto-assets, to require that all forms of payment comply with consumer protections, and to prevent fraud and theft involving crypto-assets. CHN supports measures to ensure that data and reports kept about consumers are fair, accurate and up to date; to ensure consumers easily correct errors, and to promote fair and just treatment by data holders such as credit reporting agencies. es. CHN supports measures to eliminate the impact of racial disparities, medical debts and rental debts in credit reports, and to limit their use in tenant screening, employment, and insurance. CHN supports efforts to ensure the use of artificial intelligence, big data, algorithms, machine learning and other technology do not result in disparate impacts that harm communities of color or other protected classes. CHN supports ensuring that trans and nonbinary people who change their legal names are able to quickly and easily update their names on all of their financial and government records, including credit reports CHN supports measures to ensure that financial data is kept private, that consumers have greater control over their data, that when they give permission to access their data it is not used for other secondary purposes, and data is used only for appropriate purposes that do not disproportionately harm vulnerable or communities. CHN supports efforts to ensure that working families can get, keep, insure, and use a reliable car at fair, affordable and unbiased terms, with transparency and consistency in car sales and finance. CHN supports increased financial education and policies that encourage savings as helpful steps in promoting long-term economic security. CHN supports fair treatment of consumers who owe debts and the opportunity for second chances and a fresh start. CHN supports programs that work with consumers to save homes, to modify mortgages, auto loans and other types of loans, reduce or cancel student loans, and to access affordable repayment plans. CHN opposes unfair, deceptive or abusive debt collection practices. CHN supports limits on garnishments, offsets and debt collection with reasonable statutes of limitations to ensure that consumers have sufficient funds to pay for necessities. CHN supports fair bankruptcy laws, access to bankruptcy to achieve a fresh start, and the ability of bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages and discharge student loans. CHN opposes deceptive, abusive or fraudulent debt settlement, credit repair, loan modification or foreclosure rescue practices that exploit vulnerable consumers and leave them in a worse position. CHN advocates for a strong, independent, and adequately funded Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and efforts by other federal, state and local agencies to protect consumers. CHN opposes any attempts to weaken the CFPB, including by ending its dedicated funding, changing its organizational structure from a single Director to a Commission, or removing or weakening its powers. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes measures to make it more difficult for agencies to adopt and enforce consumer protection laws and rules to protect consumers. CHN supports the role of states in protecting consumers and addressing emerging problems and opposes preemption of state consumer protections, including through legislation, banking or other regulations or federal charters.

CHN opposes expanded ICE detention funding pending thorough investigations of shootings by ICE and inhumane and deadly conditions in ICE detention facilities. At minimum, we oppose funding for additional detention beds in annual DHS appropriations bill and plans to construct new, massive detention facilities designed to hold tens of thousands of people at once. CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports the Dream and Promise Act. CHN opposes any effort to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations. CHN opposes dramatic increases in funding for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. CHN opposes increased immigration enforcement in local communities and the Trump administrations rescission of the long-standing policy limiting immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions. CHN opposes the abuse of wartime authority to disappear individuals from the U.S.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN strongly opposes deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in addition to other basic needs programs coupled with tax breaks that drain resources from lower-income families to give tax breaks to the wealthy plus fund family separation, border enforcement, detention, and deportation of immigrants CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes attacks on federal funding for local communities, including freezing/impounding/rescinding spending included in Congressional appropriations bills, including proposed changes to federal grantmaking and the Uniform Guidance governing federal grants, cooperative agreements, and other monetary awards to nonprofits, state and local governments, and other grantees. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The Coalition on Human Needs supports strong state UI programs that reflect the needs of todays working families. Congress must require states to provide up to 26 weeks of regular UI benefits, which, in an economy of rising unemployment durations, would provide jobseekers, especially lower-wage jobseekers, with a more realistic window of time to find suitable new employment. Further, in recognition of the prominent role of part-time work in the U.S. economy, especially in large service providing industries, Congress must ensure that part-time workers are eligible in all states. CHN supports continued eligibility of gig and self-employed workers for unemployment benefits, as was provided through Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. CNH supports federal standards that require states to increase UI benefit amounts to meet the needs of workers, particularly the high percentage of Black, brown and indigenous workers who are underpaid and relied on their full wages to afford basic necessities. CHN supports an adequately funded UI system, to ensure it can continue meeting its goals of stabilizing the economy and households during difficult times without harsh benefits cuts that harm working families. As a first step, Congress must raise the portion of annual earnings subject to federal UI taxation, known as the taxable wage base, which at $7,000, is highly regressive. Recent policy reform proposals have put forward levels ranging from one-third to one-half of the Social Security taxable wage base. Notably, this would cause state wage bases to rise automatically and dramatically increase the health of state trust funds, meaning that they would be less likely to need massive federal loans during high-use periods such as recessions. CHN supports fair access to state UI programs, supported by full federal funding of program administration, and strong enforcement of applicable federal standards, to ensure state claims-filing processes can be easily understood and accomplished by most workers, including workers with literacy challenges, workers with limited English proficiency, older workers, workers without access to the internet, and disabled workers. CHN supports federal investments in layoff aversion strategies like short-time compensation, also known as work sharing, which lets firms reduce work hours as an alternative to layoffs during temporary downturns. UI benefits would then supplement worker earnings until conditions recover. 72 CHN supports a revitalized Employment Service, which provides cost-effective jobsearch assistance to jobseekers, including UI claimants, and greater investment in Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments, or RESEA, for UI claimants, especially those identified as the most likely to become long-term unemployed. CHN supports Congressional authorization of a Job Seekers Allowance, which would be a modest, means-tested benefit to workers who are ineligible for UI, but who are looking for work and need financial assistance in order to be able to meaningfully search for work and support themselves and their families while doing so. CHN supports reforms to the Extended Benefits (EB) program, the permanent federal-state program that extends the benefit duration of claimants who exhaust their regular state benefits during recessions. To ensure EB ramps up swiftly during difficult times, state activation criteria, also known as triggers, should be based on state unemployment rates, rather than insured unemployment rates, which are stricter; and payments should be fully federally funded, as state trust fund reserves usually are low or depleted during recessions. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes proposals that would grant states waivers of important federal UI requirements, for such purposes as diverting scarce UI trust fund dollars to conduct demonstration projects that allege to facilitate the reemployment of a states UI recipients but that condition UI receipt on factors unrelated to substantive eligibility; or to defy federal UI administrative standards, first established to ensure the prompt payment of benefits to eligible jobless workers. Current federal UI law grants states broad authority to define UI eligibility rules and disqualification penalties. In addition, many states demonstrated during the Great Recession that they have the capability and resources under existing federal UI law to employ strategies that help facilitate reemployment. CHN opposes any proposals that draw UI eligibility distinctions based on individual earnings. Involuntary job loss and long-term unemployment impose a wide range of material and personal hardships. The lowest wage workers shouldnt be ineligible because of too-small earnings, and it would be incorrect to presume that even the highest-wage earners are immune to these outcomes.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports the Dream and Promise Act. CHN opposes any effort to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations. CHN opposes dramatic increases in funding for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. CHN opposes increased immigration enforcement in local communities and the Trump administrations rescission of the long-standing policy limiting immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions. CHN opposes the abuse of wartime authority to disappear individuals from the U.S.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations anddedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI)Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage. CHN opposes cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. CHN opposes proposals that make it hard to exempt people with serious and complex health conditions from Medicaid work reporting requirement. CHN opposes increased paperwork burdens and reverification requirements that could lead to eligible people losing health coverage. CHN supports making home- and community-based services a mandatory component of Medicaid.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth andfamilies at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for childrenand parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs ofchildren and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children whowitness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 StephanieTubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensurechildren are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populationssuch as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or otherspecialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHNsupports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successfulTransition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Servicesformula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training,and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit forworkers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access tofamilies who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenueand make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum taxrate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobsand credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rateto 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports efforts to protect and expand the United States Postal Service, including safeguarding the Universal Service Obligation, high quality and timely service, and use of USPS to provide other basic federal services such as passport applications. CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN strongly opposes deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in addition to other basic needs programs coupled with tax breaks that drain resources from lower-income families to give tax breaks to the wealthy plus fund family separation, border enforcement, detention, and deportation of immigrants CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

CHN opposes cuts to human needs programs, including TANF and the Social Services Block Grant. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth andfamilies at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for childrenand parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs ofchildren and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children whowitness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 StephanieTubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensurechildren are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populationssuch as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or otherspecialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHNsupports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successfulTransition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Servicesformula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports efforts to protect and expand the United States Postal Service, including safeguarding the Universal Service Obligation, high quality and timely service, and use of USPS to provide other basic federal services such as passport applications. CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training,and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

CHN opposes large increases in funding that go to wasteful Pentagon contractors and private prisons used for detention and family separation, and come at the expense of programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and education programs. CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list).

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports the Dream and Promise Act. CHN opposes any effort to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations. CHN opposes dramatic increases in funding for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. CHN opposes increased immigration enforcement in local communities and the Trump administrations rescission of the long-standing policy limiting immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions. CHN opposes the abuse of wartime authority to disappear individuals from the U.S.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports legislation to protect employees exercising their labor rights, including increased protections for workers engaging in strikes or peaceful protest actions, increased access to the court system for workers seeking justice for violations of their rights, and increased penalties for employers that violate workers rights. CHN supports robust policies and adequate funding to enforce workplace protections such as the right to minimum wage and overtime pay, child labor laws, healthy and safe workplaces, and equal opportunity and equal treatment, as well as legislation to enhance workplace safety, such as preventing heat illness, addressing workplace violence, and protecting state and local government workers and other workers from health and safety hazards. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any federal action that would erode worker protections, including the right to organize, to receive fair wages, to work in healthy and safe workplaces, to be whistleblowers, and to be free from discrimination. CHN opposes any federal action, including in the courts that would weaken public sector unions by prohibiting them from collecting fees from nonmembers to cover the basic costs that the union incurs representing them. CHN opposes any efforts to roll back legal protections and agency enforcement efforts addressing pregnancy discrimination. CHN opposes politicizing the federal government and state-level workforce administering federal benefits by eliminating civil service protections for large numbers of career employees. CHN opposes turning back the clock on federal minimum wage and overtime protections, including for home care workers. CHN opposes immigration enforcement actions that undermine the enforcement of labor, health and safety, anti-retaliation and other employment laws. CHN supports legislative actions that will curb misclassification of employees as independent contractors. CHN supports legislative actions to secure full employee rights for workers currently excluded from federal labor law protections, including domestic workers, farmworkers, day laborers, in-home child care providers and others. CHN supports legislative actions that will curb employers abuse of immigrant workers. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit forworkers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access tofamilies who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenueand make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum taxrate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobsand credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rateto 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool programs. CHN opposes proposals that will make higher education costs will go up. This includes taking away the most affordable student loan repayment plan, costing the typical college graduate almost $3000 more per year in loan payments; taking away access to federal student loans from many graduate students, effectively cutting off access to Public Service Loan Forgiveness for most public service workers with a graduate degree; and taking away protections for defrauded students, making it easier for predatory colleges to scam students and get away with it. CHN opposes dismantling income-driven repayment plans which leave borrowers with expensive, inflexible loan payments. Eliminating these programs would disproportionately affect public servants and overburdened borrowers, including Black women, who hold the highest average student loan debt. Veterans and disabled borrowers eligible for loan discharge would also be impacted. Without these protections, millions of families could be pushed into financial hardship, deepening economic disparities. CHN opposes tax policies that undermine public K-12 education by creating a new, national voucher program. Its an attack on public education that would give away billions of federal taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers instead of directing resources to the public schools that 90% of American children attend, undermining overall investments in public education. CHN opposes policies that take away rights and protections that students are guaranteed at public schools, such as the rights for students with disabilities included in the IDEA.

CHN opposes cuts to Medicaid. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends.This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations anddedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI)Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth andfamilies at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for childrenand parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs ofchildren and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children whowitness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 StephanieTubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensurechildren are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populationssuch as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or otherspecialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHNsupports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successfulTransition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Servicesformula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports efforts to protect and expand the United States Postal Service, including safeguarding the Universal Service Obligation, high quality and timely service, and use of USPS to provide other basic federal services such as passport applications. CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training,and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports The People Over the Pentagon Act, which would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports the Dream and Promise Act. CHN opposes any effort to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations. CHN opposes dramatic increases in funding for border enforcement, detention and deportation of immigrants, many of whom have legal status the Trump Administration is now attempting to overturn. CHN opposes increased immigration enforcement in local communities and the Trump administrations rescission of the long-standing policy limiting immigration enforcement in schools, hospitals, and religious institutions. CHN opposes the abuse of wartime authority to disappear individuals from the U.S.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit forworkers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access tofamilies who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenueand make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum taxrate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobsand credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rateto 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underservedstudents. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve anambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate theeducators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for allfamilies. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retainstaff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programsincluding Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities EducationAct Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on thetransformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool

CHN opposes cuts to Medicaid. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends.This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations anddedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI)Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports an increase in the federal minimum wage to $17/hour for all workers indexed to average wage growth so that it cannot erode due to Congressional neglect. All sub-minimum wages should be gradually eliminated - those for workers with disabilities, youth and student workers. Furthermore, the tipped minimum wage should be eliminated, establishing one robust minimum wage for all workers. CHN supports policies and adequate funding to enforce workplace protections such as the right to no less than the minimum wage, healthy and safe workplaces that are free from harassment of any kind, equal opportunity, equal treatment, and equal pay. CHN supports restoring vitality to the federal overtime law by defending and finalizing a new regulation with an increased salary threshold that automatically updates periodically to prevent stagnation. Congress should also pass legislation raising the salary threshold to approximately $85,000, index the threshold to inflation, and reform the duties test mandating that workers must spend a majority of their time doing exempt work in order to be exempt from the overtime requirement. CHN supports requiring the payment of prevailing wages in federal contracting. CHN supports federal legislation to improve gender pay equity and enforcement of equal pay laws. CHN supports legislation to create fair job schedules, including proposed laws that would give workers the right to ask for a change in their schedule without fear of retaliation; to receive sufficient advance notice of their job schedules; to receive a minimum number of hours of work per week; to receive reporting pay if sent home from work early; to receive compensation if required to be on-call or scheduled for a call-in shift; and (for part-time workers) to receive access to available hours prior to the hiring of additional part-time workers. CHN supports legislation to create equitable access to benefits and pay for part-time workers. CHN supports executive actions that advance the equal pay and non-discrimination policies set out above and apply high-road requirements to the federal contracting workforce. CHN supports vigorous and robust strategic enforcement of wage and hour laws and federal contracting requirements related to equal pay and fair wages. CHN supports improving the economic and social well-being of workers and their families by empowering workers to form and join unions. Unions are one of the best vehicles for improving workers and their families economic resources and the reduction in union membership has hurt workers, fed income inequality, and lead to widespread wage stagnation. Our labor laws need to be strengthened to prevent irresponsible employers from intimidating pro-union employees. CHN supports the freedom to form unions and negotiate free from fear, intimidation, and interference. (See Fairness in the Workplace section.) The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any legislation that would undermine or erode existing state and local labor standards, such as laws that fully preempt any attempts to improve workplace standards.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports The People Over the Pentagon Act, which would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP and other nutrition programs in the Farm Bill. CHN opposes provisions outsourcing administrative functions currently required to be performed by public sector merit employees in the Farm Bill. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC, TEFAP, and other nutrition programs.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN opposes the proposed elimination of the Department of Education and other attacks on the administrative state. This would take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students - and 95% of students with disabilities - learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools. CHN supports safeguarding civil rights protections for students and educators, specifically as they relate to Title IX, Title VI, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Civil Rights Act. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax. CHN supports full funding of the IRS, including the agencys annual base funding and mandatory funding provided to the IRS by the Inflation Reduction Act, so that the agency has adequate funding to better provide customer service to taxpayers as well as to strengthen and increase enforcement activities, especially focusing on taxpayers or corporations avoiding or evading large dollar amounts. This includes investment in and continuation of the Direct File Program. CHN opposes any additional rescissions of IRS funding.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for wasteful spending in defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The Coalition on Human Needs supports legislative solutions for our nations broken, outdated immigration laws, including access to a clear, accessible and affordable path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living and working in the U.S. CHN supports permanent protections for undocumented youth and those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), many of whom have lived in the U.S. for decades. CHN supports the U.S. commitment to welcoming refugees who are fleeing persecution and imminent danger as a reflection of our moral and national values, including refugee resettlement and asylum access at U.S. borders and ports. CHN supports cuts to funding for enforcement, detention and surveillance mechanisms of the Department of Homeland Security to mitigate harmful and abusive enforcement practices, detention expansion and militarization of the southern border. CHN supports an increase in federal funds for legal services for immigrants facing removal and community-based services and support for immigrants, including respite and shelter for new arrivals and case management support for longer term residents who need them. CHN supports Congress providing access to supports that will help immigrants integrate into the fabric of our communities. This should include policies that harness the skills of immigrant workers and allow them to develop their full potential, including expanding immigrants access to adult education and workforce development programs, English language acquisition programs, and dual generation programs, as well as access to essential documents such as drivers licenses. CHN supports robust enforcement of civil rights protections for immigrants, ensuring no one is discriminated against because of their immigration status or nation of origin. This includes ensuring that people with limited English proficiency are able to fully access federally run and funded programs without barriers. CHN supports policies that lift immigrant families out of poverty and promote economic security. CHN supports equal access, regardless of immigration status, to safety net programs, refundable tax credits, public services and economic supports that meet basic human needs, including health services and insurance, education, employment benefits, nutrition assistance, and income supplements. CHN supports immigrants full access to public health programs, including testing and vaccines for viruses like COVID-19. CHN supports full labor and civil rights protections for immigrant workers, regardless of immigration status. CHN supports the continuation and strengthening of federal policies by both immigration and labor law enforcement agencies that prevent unscrupulous employers from exploiting immigration status to deter employees from asserting their rights on the job. CHN supports policies that build trust between local law enforcement and all community members to ensure public safety. Separating local policing from federal immigration enforcement promotes the safety of the whole community. Forcing local law enforcement to enforce or cooperate with federal immigration law does not make communities any safer and inhibits victims and witnesses of crimes from coming forward as they fear retribution or separation from their families. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes massive enforcement and deportation initiatives that will tear apart immigrant families and communities. CHN opposes any increases to funding for a border wall, detention, or other enforcement and surveillance resources for the Department of Homeland Security. CHN opposes the detention of immigrants and urges instead the use of community-based non-carceral alternatives to detention. CHN opposes threats to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to Temporary Protected Status (TPS). DACA is protecting over 535,000 young immigrants from deportation who have made important contributions to their communities and the economy. TPS designations currently provide humanitarian protection to more than 850,000 individuals - many of whom have lived in the U.S. for decades and sometimes in the same households as DACA recipients. CHN opposes bans on entry to the United States on the basis of religion or national origin such as the Muslim and African Bans enacted during the first Trump administration. CHN opposes threats to our family-based immigration system. Family unity must serve as one of the core tenets of the United States immigration system. CHN opposes policies that divide families, including separating children from parents and other actions that have a divisive or harmful effect on immigrant communities and that foster restricted access to services for eligible beneficiaries or indirect intimidation where people are forced to forego basic needs. CHN opposes changes to the "public charge" policy that would create a de facto wealth test for immigrating to the U.S. and obtaining lawful permanent residency and would deter immigrants and their family members from enrolling in and utilizing health coverage, public services and economic supports that meet basic human needs. CHN opposes restricting the availability of coverage and care for immigrants, unnecessary documentation requirements, and any other barriers to health care for immigrants - including LGBTQ+ immigrants - and their families. CHN opposes questioning hospital patients about their immigration status, which makes families afraid of accessing health care and forces health care providers to abandon their ethical duties to put patients first. CHN opposes immigration enforcement actions conducted at health care facilities, schools, faith institutions, social service sites, community centers, courts, and any other location that individuals should be able to access without fear. CHN opposes the collection and use of data for purposes outside of their originally intended purpose to target immigrants (for example, an immigrants data collected for a specific non-law enforcement purpose being shared with law enforcement). CHN opposes the application of Title 42 or other bans to entry or asylum based on manner of entry or manner of transit to the United States. Such denials are contrary to U.S. and international law, create disorder at the southern border, and result in refugees being summarily returned to harm or forced to wait in Mexico, where they are in grave danger of violent crime. CHN opposes Remain in Mexico, Asylum Cooperative Agreements, and other similar programs that offshore the United States asylum obligations to other countries and leave asylum seekers in danger. CHN opposes immigration policies and practices that disparately harm Black and Brown immigrants, people seeking asylum, and immigrants living in poverty.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted. CHN supports protecting voting rights. The Coalition on Human Needs supports enhancing data on young children, including improving the quality of data on young children in the decennial census, which has substantially undercounted young children, and in annual population estimates derived from these data. CHN supports adequate funding for the Census Bureau (including for important surveys on economic security and hardship such as the Household Trends and Outlook Pulse Survey and Survey of Income and Program Participation) and for the presently underfunded Bureau of Labor Statistics. CHN supports additional funding to modernize surveys to address growing problems such as non-response. CHN supports including questions on sexual orientation and gender identity in surveys and record systems in consultation with federal statistical experts and external stakeholders working to address the needs of overlooked communities. CHN supports the expeditious implementation of the Office of Management and Budgets revisions to 2024 Statistical Policy Directive 15 for reporting race in combination with Hispanic origin, including a category for people with origins in the Middle East or North Africa, and mandatory detailed data (disaggregated data) across all federal agencies, including in administrative records datasets, including the 2030 Census. CHN supports careful analysis of the accuracy of the 2020 Census, with special attention to better understanding the undercounts of children, communities of color, immigrants, and low-income communities. Efforts should be made to derive and apply lessons from the 2020 Census to mitigate or eliminate any such undercounts in 2030 and to ensure that funding distributions intended to serve low-income communities are not jeopardized by inaccurate census data. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line. These measures should be designed with input from Congress and the public, including those with lived experiences of financial hardship, and guidance from the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Statistics. Any new measure should be tied to 21st-century living standards in line with measures used in other wealthy countries. Moreover, any effort to account for geographic variations in the cost of living should account for child care, housing, utility, and transportation costs. CHN supports monthly or quarterly updating of poverty statistics in order to better track the changing needs of families and individuals. CHN opposes political interference in the inherently apolitical work of statistical agencies. CHN opposes asking about citizenship status on the decennial census questionnaire given that this question would lead to a decrease in response rates and accuracy.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions. CHN supports administrative actions to protect workers, including overtime protections and child labor enforcement. CHN opposes provisions outsourcing administrative functions currently required to be performed by public sector merit employees in the Farm Bill.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports administrative actions aimed at protecting families with an undocumented spouse and allowing DACA recipients and other Dreamers to receive work visas more quickly. CHN opposes poison pill riders that attack immigrants and mixed status families. CHN supports the Dream and Promise Act CHN opposes any effort to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition. CHN supports investments in public health in Congress's annual appropriations process.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP and other nutrition programs in the Farm Bill. CHN opposes provisions outsourcing administrative functions currently required to be performed by public sector merit employees in the Farm Bill. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC, TEFAP, and other nutrition programs.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted. CHN supports protecting voting rights.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions. CHN supports administrative actions to protect workers, including overtime protections and child labor enforcement.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition. CHN supports investments in public health in Congress's annual appropriations process.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP and other nutrition programs in the Farm Bill. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC, TEFAP, and other nutrition programs.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted. CHN supports protecting voting rights.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP and other nutrition programs in the Farm Bill. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC, TEFAP, and other nutrition programs.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC and TEFAP.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports H.R. 16, the Dream and Promise Act of 2023. CHN opposes any effort to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC and TEFAP.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports H.R. 16, the Dream and Promise Act of 2023. CHN opposes any effort to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.

CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.

CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC and TEFAP in FY24.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.

CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.

CHN supports significant increases in funding for low-income housing.

The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.

CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC in FY23.

CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities.

CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports maintaining and substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.

CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship.

CHN supports reforming drug pricing and applying the savings to add benefits for Medicare recipients. CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA.

CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports making permanent the changes to the Earned Income Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan Act that expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports making permanent the changes to the Child Tax Credit in the American Rescue Plan Act that makes the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit to $3000 for children age 6 and older and to $3600 for children under age 6. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.

CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills.