A look at RESULTS campaigns in 2021
As RESULTS kicks off our First 100 Days campaign, we’ll be pushing right away for more COVID relief that’s so desperately needed in this country and around the world.
But we won’t be content with just a short-term emergency response. Poverty, structural racism, and global inequality were crises long before the pandemic. The first 100 days will help decide which trajectory we get on – one that goes back to “normal” after the pandemic, or one that actually builds with equity and justice.
As we always have, we’re asking ourselves: what’s driving poverty in this country and around the world? And where can government investment and policies make a difference right now? What role should the U.S. Congress play? That’s where our nonpartisan grassroots advocacy movement comes in.
We’ll be working on big, ambitious policy changes and new investments focused on housing, tax policy, the racial wealth divide, nutrition, education, and global health. All of our campaigns are grounded in equity, prioritizing policies that help undo structural racism and that focus on the communities that have been most marginalized.
We’re not waiting around to see what policymakers decide to do in 2021. RESULTS volunteers will kick off the year by working to meet with every single U.S. Senate office and three-quarters of the House.
We’ll get in there right away to help set a bold agenda against poverty and oppression.
Here’s a look at what’s on that agenda:
Confronting the affordable housing crisis
A staggering 1 in 3 U.S. adults is having trouble paying weekly expenses during the pandemic, and the numbers are even higher for Black, Indigenous and people of color. Without action, millions of families could face eviction. We’re pushing Congress to invest a total of $100 billion for rental assistance over 12 months, building on the 3-month down payment RESULTS volunteers helped secure in December. And we know that housing was an emergency even before the pandemic, so we’ll be pushing for bold long-term hosing solutions to support renters, increase the supply of affordable housing, and address home ownership.
U.S. tax policy and inequality
Congress already hears from lots of corporations and lobbyists about taxes. What they hear less about is how they can use the tax code to tackle poverty. The pandemic has only further exploited the longstanding inequality in this country, and now millions more people are living on the brink. The staggering racial wealth divide is growing, with communities of color facing the worst of the pandemic’s consequences. We’ll be pushing for a tax code that’s grounded in equity, prioritizing the lowest-income people, not the wealthy few. This include large-scale, permanent expansions of refundable tax credits for low-income people, like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.
Boosting U.S. nutrition programs
RESULTS volunteers helped push Congress to boost nutrition benefits at the end of 2020 in response to the pandemic, but far more is still needed. By the end of last year, more than a third of U.S. families were facing food insecurity, including over 40% of Black families. A temporary 15% increase to SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) runs out in June, but hunger and the consequences of the pandemic will last much longer.
A global response to a global pandemic
At the end of 2020, RESULTS helped secure a historic $4 billion investment to support millions of people in low-income countries to access a COVID vaccine. But millions more are still being left behind, and Congress is yet to invest anything in other urgently needed emergency health or nutrition COVID relief outside the United States. The pandemic has caused universal disruption and suffering, but it’s the communities already pushed to the margins that face the greatest risks. The lackluster global response from the U.S. must change. We’ll be pushing Congress for at least $20 billion in global emergency funding, including $4 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
New U.S. commitment to global education
The pandemic’s consequences stretch far beyond the virus itself, including denying hundreds of millions more children the education they deserve. Despite its strong history of bipartisan leadership on global health, the U.S. has rarely played a significant role on global education. We’ll be pushing the Biden Administration and Congress to change that, making a $1 billion multiyear commitment to the Global Partnership for Education and its plan to transform education systems for more than 1 billion children globally.
Read the Global Partnership for Education’s case for investment.
Increasing funding and impact on neglected global poverty issues
Well before COVID-19, malnutrition was an underlying cause of half the world’s child deaths, and tuberculosis remained the world’s biggest infectious killer. This wasn’t because these problems are unsolvable, but because policymakers hadn’t made them a priority. The pandemic has only made matters worse for millions of people, so we’ll be pushing for the policies and investments that will make a lasting difference. This work starts with the annual government funding process called appropriations. Later in the year, we’ll push Congress and the White House into action on tuberculosis and nutrition through new legislation, media, and more, including pushing for a historic $1 billion investment in global tuberculosis.
This campaign overview is just a start. Stay tuned for detailed policy briefs and background reading, campaign overview videos, updated statistics, materials to share with members of Congress, and all the tools you’ll need to take action.
Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash