Debbie Weinstein is the Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs.
Blog Post List
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Childcare & Early Education Environmental Health Families & The Federal Budget Health Care Politics & Policy
March 31, 2016
Members of Congress like to talk about securing the future for our children and grandchildren. Instead, Congress has foreclosed opportunity for many thousands of children because of its irresponsible failure to protect them from lead poison. Congress needs to come back and ensure that all children now threatened by such toxic inaction have the protection and services they need.
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March 8, 2016
Negotiations in the Senate over funding to help Flint, MI have produced a bill with a bipartisan list of 10 cosponsors, and it contains a cut to pay for the Flint relief. Yet its prospects are still uncertain.
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March 1, 2016
A Coalition on Human Needs analysis released this week shows that over the past six years, dating back to fiscal year 2010, funding for many of our country’s most important priorities has shrunk. We need Congress to recognize that an investment in people is an investment in our economy, which would benefit everyone. We are seeing the harm now from years of cuts. It is time to rebuild.
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January 29, 2016
Clint Mitchell is an elementary school principal in Prince William County, Virginia. He doesn’t like to test students at the end of the month. Why? Because their families are running out of food by then – their SNAP benefits don’t last the whole month. I heard him at a White House Conversation on Child Hunger in America on Wednesday, January 27. When his students come to school hungry, they are tired, irritable, and can’t focus on their schoolwork. They get in trouble. If he can arrange it, Principal Mitchell would rather conduct standardized tests no later than the middle of the month. (And...
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January 22, 2016
President Obama in his State of the Union address called us to a better politics, and Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) likewise called for us to resist the temptation to “follow the siren call of the angriest voices.” Such remarks should bring glimmers of hope to voters frustrated by a hyper-partisan Congress that is often unable to pass pragmatic legislation on areas of broad bi-partisan agreement. One of the clearest and most impactful next steps Congress can take in 2016 is to expand tax credits for low-income workers who don’t have dependent children: a bipartisan idea that would lift millions...
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December 22, 2015
Join our webinar on "$2 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America" and then comment on our blog. Whether or not you’ve lived in poverty, your perspective on what can help build a supportive community is most welcome.
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November 19, 2015
Our elected officials and wannabee leaders can welcome war-stricken children and adults and help to calm their fears and re-make their lives. Or they can play upon fears here.
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October 15, 2015
Tell Congress: Don't scare us - get to work! Increase the debt limit and #StopTheCuts by Halloween.
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September 18, 2015
New data released by the Census Bureau show that poverty remains too high and the economic recovery is unshared.
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Childcare & Early Education Families & The Federal Budget Family Economic Security Politics & Policy
May 20, 2015
Idaho's state legislature held an unusual special session to prevent the state from losing access to federal child support collection resources. These resources help more than 100,000 parents and 155,000 children in the state.
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March 20, 2015
The House Budget Committee recently released its FY 2016 budget proposal . There were just too many Head Smackers in it to narrow it down to one, so we came up with eight. Below are slides highlighting the most Head Smacking parts of it. The Coalition on Human Needs' SAVE for All Campaign has four main principles: protect low-income and vulnerable people; invest in broadly shared economic growth; increase revenues from fair sources, and seek savings by targeting waste in the Pentagon and elsewhere. How does the budget introduced by House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price (R-GA) measure up to...
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Childcare & Early Education Families & The Federal Budget Family Economic Security Food! Health Care Immigration Politics & Policy Realistic & Fair Wages
March 6, 2015
Take action and tell Congress our families, children, and communities need more investments and less waste in the FY2016 budget.
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February 20, 2015
The House passed billions in corporate tax breaks while neglecting low-income workers and their families. It's not only a Head Smacker, it's unacceptable.
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January 16, 2015
The House used the first week of the new Congressional session to pass a bill that puts health coverage and paychecks for Americans workers at risk and raises the federal deficit by $53 billion. That’s a Head Smacker in and of itself.
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November 24, 2014
I was at a rally in front of the White House on Friday organized by Casa de Maryland in which we chanted "We've got your back!" As a mom and grandma, I believe it's really important to support the President's actions to give temporary legal status to parents of citizen or legal resident children. This action will keep parents and children together. I hope you'll join in showing your support by sending emails to the President and your Rep and Senators, by clicking here: http://org.salsalabs.com/o/125/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=1... We have to show how many people believe the...
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November 14, 2014
Lecia Imbery wrote this (she's the Coalition on Human Needs' Senior Policy Writer). Pretty interesting, and as a mom and grandma, I think it makes a whole lot of sense. To ensure that kids thrive and succeed from birth onward, we must simultaneously address the obstacles facing their parents. The ability of our children to enter and navigate paths to success has implications for all of us. The 17 million young children in low-income families today will become tomorrow’s parents, employees and leaders. Earlier this week, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released their new KIDS COUNT policy report...
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November 4, 2014
The number of children receiving child care funded by the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) fell to a 15-year low, according to CLASPanalysis of data from the Department of Health and Human Services. The CCDBG is the primary source of federal funding for helping low-income families pay for child care, with half of the families who receive benefits living below the poverty level.
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October 15, 2014
“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud, if there is not actual danger of such fraud, and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burden.” – 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner
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August 2, 2014
Easy links to learn about Ryan's poverty plan - and the hard questions that must be asked about it.
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August 2, 2014
The Ryan poverty plan will create more poverty, not less.
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