Add your name! Members of Congress start to listen when thousands of people state clearly and emphatically that we support the human needs agenda.

Working with a growing coalition of national partners of national, state and local faith-based, human service providers, civil rights, labor, policy experts, and community-based and advocacy organizations, here is the what our Coalition on Human Needs is fighting for:

Protect and Empower People with Low Incomes

Federal investments should ensure all people have the building blocks of a decent life: opportunities to work to earn a living wage and benefits and to care for family members; access to food, housing, health care, education, and training; and income supplements when work pays too little or is not possible, including for seniors in retirement, people with disabilities, and families raising children. Congress must increase the federal minimum wage, make permanent increases in nutrition assistance, create automatic triggers for increased unemployment and other benefits to respond to economic downturns, increase the supply of affordable housing and expand access to rental assistance, ensure all have access to quality, affordable health care, and provide permanent increases in income assistance through such means as the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. Protecting people with low incomes also requires all people to have access to basic needs programs -- regardless of immigrant status. It also requires a commitment to support working families through good quality child care and paid leave.

Promote Job Creation and Strengthen the Green Economy

By investing in meeting our human and physical infrastructure needs, we can create jobs with good pay and benefits for millions of Americans. We must make investments in affordable and healthy housing, clean air and water, affordable public transit, renewable energy, a reliable electric grid and broadband access. We must also invest in public institutions and care for children and the elderly — essential work that is underpaid and largely performed by women of color. To build a more just economy, we must have strong wage and benefit guarantees, labor rights and access to unions, and investments in job training and education including apprenticeships and subsidized jobs that reach youth, young adults, and older workers seeking re-training. Finally, the federal government must enforce equitable hiring and contracting to prevent discrimination by race, ethnicity, religion, or gender.

Require the Wealthy and Corporations to Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes

We must raise revenue to make transformative investments in our nation’s future and address America’s growing chasm in income and wealth inequality. The large tax cuts at the end of 2017 resulted in a windfall to wealthy individuals and to corporations which, in turn, provided huge dividends to shareholders, not promised jobs. Tax breaks and loopholes favoring the rich and corporations are starving our country of the revenue needed to make the critical public investments to protect the most vulnerable in our society, allow for shared economic growth, and ensure opportunity for everyone. What is needed is a tax system based on fairness and adequacy — a system that is more progressive and raises more revenue from our country’s wealthiest individuals and corporations to meet our nation’s many needs and to reduce enormous racial and gender wealth gaps.

Cut Wasteful Spending in the Pentagon and Elsewhere

Failure to control wasteful and unnecessary spending makes it harder to meet our country’s needs. Military budgets should be subject to the same oversight and discipline as other spending, yet the Pentagon is the only government agency that has yet to pass an audit. The Pentagon’s budget is higher than at the peak of the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the Korean War and is greater than the defense budgets of the next ten countries combined. Its surplus is being used to militarize domestic law enforcement. Other examples of unnecessary and harmful federal spending include mass incarceration and anti-immigrant enforcement activity. Reducing wasteful and counterproductive spending will free up much-needed revenue for human needs priorities and lead to true security for all

To get the attention of Congress, add your name, showing your support for the human needs agenda.