Ten Big ideas

A Unified Budget to Demilitarize America, at Home & Abroad - Ashik Siddique, Institute for Policy Studies

asiddique@nationalpriorities.org

We spend too much on the military - more than the next seven biggest spenders combined, and more than 140 other countries altogether. The Pentagon’s budget is more than half of what Congress allocates every year - it dwarfs all discretionary non-military spending, including public programs that meet human needs.

The National Priorities Project is proposing a budget for demilitarization that could safely shift as much as $350 billion per year away from the Pentagon by ending the endless wars, closing 60% of foreign bases, cutting unnecessary weapons, and much more. This would make the whole world safer, begin unravelling the U.S.'s role in long-term unrest in the Middle East and other places, and it would also help fund our big progressive ideas.

Getting Religion on Taxes - Frank Clemente, Americans for Tax Fairness

frank.clemente@gmail.com

Over the next ten years, the United States government needs to raise ten trillion dollars more than it is currently raising. We need to raise this money in order to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, provide affordable childcare and housing, make public college free, help students pay down their debt, make health care more affordable, and much more. The only way we are going to raise this money is if we all get religion on taxes; by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations and making sure they finally pay their fair share.

Industrial Policy and Planning: What It Is and How to Do It Better - Todd Tucker, Roosevelt Institute

ttucker@rooseveltinstitute.org

Some industries have greater potential for productivity gains than others, some industries demand more workers than others, and some industries are less detrimental than others. Some countries engage in systematic industrial policy while other do it on an ad hoc basis for whatever industry gives enough campaign donations to attract the attention of lawmakers. The U.S. favors all sorts of industries but does not admit that what we are doing is industrial policy. In effect, we have never had systematic, economy-wide planning. How could we think about applying industrial policy here at home?

We have to reinvest in government, invest in clean industries, address equity and inclusion, and raise taxes and invest in industries that will provide a return to the public.

RESILIENCE FORCE - SAKET SONI, GUESTWORKERS ALLIANCE

soni@guestworkeralliance.org

Climate change is making disasters more frequent and forceful, and expensive. A new workforce is emerging to respond to climate disasters: resilience workers, people who prepare for, and repair after, disasters. They often travel from state to state, disaster site to disaster site to rebuild. Disaster resilience and recovery is now “a growing industry.” Like auto manufacturing in another era, this huge growth industry can be a path to rebuilding America’s middle class.

We propose these bold steps to help build the resilience economy for disaster-hit communities, and for the workers helping them rebuild: full labor rights for resilience workers, resilience jobs for all, and protected status for immigrant resilience workers.

Labor reform: What Comes Next? - David Madland, Center for American Progress

dmadland@americanprogress.org

Our country faces monumental economic and political challenges. We have endured forty plus years of wage stagnation, near-record levels of economic inequality, and huge divides across race and gender. Unions and collective bargaining play a central role in addressing these major challenges. Unions raise wages, and raising wages for workers reduces inequality and closes pay gaps. Unions also provide a voice for workers, encouraging them to participate in the political process as well as behind the scenes doing the work to make sure that the policies they support get enacted.

We need to continue to support unions, support collective bargaining, and engage in more grassroots organizing. This is why it is so important for us to promote policies that encourage workers to join unions.

Establishing a Job seeker’s Allowance - Indivar Dutta-Gupta, Georgetown Center on Poverty and inequality

Indi.Dutta-Gupta@law.georgetown.edu

Two in three Americans will experience at least one year of unemployment for themselves or the head of their household during their working years. Even in a robust economy, about 1 in 20 workers are between jobs on any given day. During the last recession, robust social supports for workers were essential in helping workers stay afloat. However, nearly ¾ of jobless American workers receive no assistance from unemployment insurance (UI).

Even if the current UI system were strengthened and modernized, many workers would still be categorically left out. These populations are disproportionately women and workers of color. We propose a Jobseekers’ Allowance (JSA) to help fill this gap. The JSA would serve an estimated 5.4 million jobseekers annually in economic conditions similar to 2014 and 2015.

Know Your boss - Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute

shierholz@epi.org

The rules governing work in this country are rigged against working people from their first day on the job. The current legal and political framework favors corporate interests dedicated to rolling back worker protections. This rigged system has helped produce the inequality that characterizes the United States economy of the last four decades.

To unrig our system, we need to address employee misclassification and make sure that employees in the fissured workplace can control their working conditions. Further, all firms that share control over a worker’s terms of employment should be considered employers of that worker, or “joint employers.” A federal joint employer standard should be the default for both collective bargaining and for responsibility for compliance with basic labor standards.

America needs a public credit Registry - Amy Traub, Demos

atraub@demos.org

Our borrowing and payment history is shaped by access to family wealth, good jobs, and whether we live in a neighborhood full of payday lenders. A history of racist policy means that these opportunities are not equitably distributed across race. Every decision drawing on credit data can reproduce existing racial inequality and spread it. How do we fix this?

We propose a public credit registry housed in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; a publicly run credit registry designed to be responsive to consumer needs rather than the corporate bottom line. The registry will develop new algorithms for predicting creditworthiness with a goal of minimizing disparate racial impact, be more transparent, and will have an incentive to improve accuracy.

Vision for Justice: 2020 and Beyond - Sakira Cook, Leadership conference on Civil and Human Rights

cook@civilrights.org

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, in partnership with Civil Rights Corps, released Vision for Justice 2020 & Beyond: A New Paradigm for Public Safety. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for actionable and meaningful steps communities and policymakers can take to create humane, equitable, and accountable criminal-legal systems at the federal, state, and local levels.

We propose a holistic framework that expands our view of public safety and prioritizes upfront investments in noncarceral programs and social services, including resources for education, housing, employment, health care, social-emotional supports, and much more.

The innovative platform: Vision for Justice 2020 and Beyond: A New Paradigm for Public Safety, can be found here.

A homes Guarantee - Afua Atta-Mensah, Community Voices Heard, Rep. Chuy Garcia

afua@cvhaction.org, IL-04@mail.house.gov

We are in a national housing crisis. In 2019, a full-time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in our country. Twenty-one million households, predominately people of color, spend over 30% of their income on housing. Over half a million families and individuals experience homelessness. All Americans deserve safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing. The federal government has not made a large-scale investment to address affordable housing shortages since Roosevelt created public housing with the New Deal. Globally, America is behind on the well-established trend toward a public option for housing - a Homes Guarantee. It is time to unravel the dangerous and carefully spun myth that housing can only be provided for the for-profit market.