June 2011 Joint National Conference Call: Creating a Circle of Protection to Protect Programs for the Poor

RESULTS would like to thank former member of Congress and Ambassador Tony Hall of the Alliance to End Hunger for speaking on the June RESULTS National Conference Call. Ambassador Hall spoke about his 28-day Hunger Fast he undertook to draw attention to severe cuts to human services in the federal budget. Ambassador Hall believes that the Hunger Fast, which had over 40,000 participants, helped stave off many dangerous cuts to vital anti-poverty programs in the FY 2011 budget.

However, as Ambassador Hall stated, our work is far from over. He said addressing poverty was not discussed in recent caucus meetings, which means programs designed to help individuals and families in poverty such as critical foreign aid programs, Head Start, Medicaid, SNAP, and the Earned Income Tax Credit are still very vulnerable. As we know, current FY 2012 budget and deficit reduction proposals disproportionately target low-income programs and unless we strongly respond to these efforts, many of these cuts could come to pass. The June Domestic Action helps us make that forceful response; here are a set of principles we want to you to convey to members of Congress about deficit reduction:

1. Any deficit reduction agreement must protect low-income Americans and not increase poverty. Programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and Social Security, as well as critical domestic discretionary programs, must be exempt from any automatic triggers and across the board cuts.
2. Any agreement must reject structural changes to Medicaid and SNAP, such as block grants that would hurt millions of vulnerable Americans.
3. Any agreement must have a balanced approach, relying at least as much on new revenue as it does on spending cuts.
4. Congress must reject spending caps and any balanced budget amendment.

Jen Maurer reviewed the amazing work done by RESULTS grassroots network ahead of the GAVI replenishment conference. Congratulations to everyone for your amazing work to get 62 representatives to sign the bipartisan House letter to the president requesting him to make a pledge of $450 million over three years to GAVI, a truly effective, life-saving global vaccine initiative. And many you got your senators to send their own letter — Feinstein, Hagan, Burr, Udall (CO), Bingaman, and Senator Blumenthal — which only happens when you’ve done the hard work to build a relationship and educate them. GAVI has is aware of your work and thanks you for your 21 LTEs, 6 op-eds, 1 editorial, 1 online video story about GAVI.

Listen to the June 2011 Joint National Conference Call: Creating a Circle of Protection to Protect Programs for the Poor for all the details!