Budgets are moral documents. Line item by line item, they outline the priorities and values of a nation. And for far too long, our budgets have revealed a callous indifference to working families across the country, while Pentagon spending has skyrocketed. This deal does not address the bloated Pentagon budget, but it does begin to close the gap in funding for families, by allocating more new non-defense spending than defense spending for the first time in many year
The Progressive Caucus is eager for a strong floor vote raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. We are deeply grateful to the organizers, activists and working people across the country who fought for years to make this vote a reality. It would be a disservice to these families – who put their paychecks on the line to fight for dignity in the workplace – to do anything less than what we've promised: a clean vote to raise the minimum wage, for all workers across the country.
While we support this supplemental, we cannot emphasize sufficiently that these crises were created by the Administration and we have much more to do to truly address the cruel and inhumane treatment of immigrant families by this Administration. We must do far more to address the humanitarian needs at the border and to end the inhumane enforcement practices taken by ICE and CBP.