• CHN supports protecting and strengthening SNAP and other nutrition programs in the Farm Bill. CHN supports increased appropriations for WIC, TEFAP, and other nutrition programs.
• CHN supports protecting programs in the budget critical to low-income and vulnerable people. CHN supports a significant increase in funding for non-defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN supports cutting funding for defense discretionary programs in the FY24 Budget and Appropriations Bills. CHN opposes the inclusion of "poison pill riders" on appropriations bills. CHN opposes the creation of a Fiscal Commission, which could lead to cuts to human needs programs.
• The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports the implementation of policies at the federal, state and local levels that support reentry - including policies to make reentry programs more accessible for people with disabilities - and remove harmful barriers to basic necessities such as employment, housing, education and training, and income and nutrition assistance, including repeal of the lifetime bans in SNAP, TANF, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for people with felony drug convictions. CHN supports increased funding for civil legal services programs (as described in Access to Justice) that play a critical role in helping people with records navigate barriers to employment and critical reentry supports. CHN supports legislation to reauthorize and provide robust funding for the Second Chance Act. CHN supports ensuring that all eligible citizens can freely exercise their right to vote and have their vote counted.
• CHN supports requiring the Pentagon to perform a comprehensive audit. CHN supports cutting wasteful and counterproductive spending in the Pentagon. CHN supports efforts to repeal the requirement that the Department of Defense produce a supplemental budget request (the unfunded priorities list). CHN supports H.R. 1134, The People Over the Pentagon Act, that would reduce the amount appropriated for the Department of Defense by $100B.
• CHN supports providing permanent protection and a path to citizenship for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA), Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforcement Deportation (DED) recipients and other immigration provisions. CHN supports Lift the BAR Act (Lifting Immigrant Families Through Benefits Access Restoration). CHN supports ending private prisons for Immigration. CHN opposes efforts to ban many refugees from asylum protection in the United States and would make it impossible for many refugees to reunite with their families and pursue a path to citizenship. CHN supports H.R. 16, the Dream and Promise Act of 2023. CHN opposes any effort to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal the Biden Administrations public charge regulations.
• The Coalition on Human Needs supports all workers freedom to form unions and to bargain collectively, including legislation to provide all public employees with the right to organize; to collectively bargain over wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions of employment; and to access dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration. CHN supports Paycheck Fairness Act that would address wage discrimination based on sex. CHN supports Raise the Wage Act that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. CHN supports the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act which would include the right to form unions.
• CHN supports an increase in revenues from fair and progressive sources. CHN supports expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit including expanded eligibility to those 19 and older and increased the value of the credit for workers who are not custodial parents. CHN supports expanding the Child Tax Credit to make the credit fully refundable and increases the value of the credit, while restoring access to families who file with ITINs. CHN supports reversing tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, 2017, and other changes to increase revenue and make the tax code more progressive. Those changes on the corporate side include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%; imposing a minimum tax rate on corporate offshore profits and profits reported to investors; ending tax breaks for fossil fuel production; ending deductions for offshoring jobs and credit expenses; and eliminating tax break for shifting intellectual property offshore. Changes on the individual side include returning the top rate to 39.6%; taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income; and ending stepped-up basis for estates. CHN supports an increase in funding for the IRS to strengthen its capacity to collect taxes. CHN supports calls for a financial transaction tax.
• CHN supports fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as well as fully funding ESEAs Title I program to support underserved students. The Coalition on Human Needs supports the reauthorization passage of legislation that provides funding and policy mechanisms to achieve an ambitious, transformative overhaul of existing systems to achieve child care and early learning for all. Such legislation would fairly compensate the educators doing this essential work, provide high-quality care for all children, and make early education and care affordable and accessible for all families. CHN supports substantial dedicated funding to stabilize the child care sector, which should be sufficient to ensure providers can recruit and retain staff and that parents can afford care. CHN supports substantially increasing funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant and increased funding for early childhood programs including Early Head Start, Head Start, the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting program, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Infants and Toddlers and Preschool Programs, and other programs that give young children what they need to thrive as a downpayment on the transformative vision to build a comprehensive child care and early learning system for all. CHN supports investments in afterschool and summer programs to help prevent children from losing important educational gains while away from school and to enable parents to work.
• CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN supports improvements to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has provided health insurance to 37 million Americans and improved coverage for millions more, while making savings in overall health care costs that have already contributed to a reduction in long-range deficit trends. This includes adopting measures that build on the ACAs success and expand access to health care and reduce costs. CHN supports maintaining increased premium supports for marketplace insurance. CHN opposes efforts to sabotage, dismantle, or undermine the ACA. CHN supports reforming drug pricing, including bipartisan reforms to lower drug prices through increased competition.
• The Coalition on Human Needs supports providing safe, decent, affordable rental housing to low-income households, including households who are experiencing homelessness, through a full range of programs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and elsewhere, to fund public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and homelessness assistance services. CHN supports the HOME, Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities Program, and Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly, which bring communities needed resources to meet their range of housing needs. CHN supports robust funding for all of these through annual appropriations and dedicated funding. CHN supports providing increased funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and public housing to preserve and increase the supply of safe, decent, and accessible homes affordable to extremely low-income households. CHN supports funding of special population vouchers, such as for the Family Unification Program (FUP) and the Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Program, which strengthens families by preventing or shortening foster care placements and eases the transition to adulthood for youth leaving care who are at risk of homelessness; the Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers, which provide housing and supportive services to the most vulnerable veterans; and Stability Vouchers to extend and expand the goals of the Emergency Housing Voucher program, which serves people experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and promotes greater community collaboration. CHN supports voluntary supportive services and other interventions that, in addition to housing, are needed to address housing stability, including substance use and mental health counseling, healthcare, employment training, and early care and learning. CHN supports federal Housing First policies that prioritize access to affordable homes with voluntary supportive services, which evidence shows is the most effective strategy to bring an end to homelessness. CHN supports the establishment of a tax credit to help make housing affordable for renters with the lowest incomes. CHN supports the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and reforms to better serve households and communities with the greatest needs. CHN supports Rural Housing Service programs that help meet the needs of rural renters, such as the Section 515 and Section 521 programs. CHN supports tribal housing programs, such as the Indian Housing Block Grant and Indian Community Development Block Grant, and the Native Hawaiian Housing Block Grant to ensure Native Americans have access to safe, affordable homes on their lands. CHN supports the creation of a permanent program to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of housing instability and eviction, building on the successful infrastructure built during the pandemic. CHN supports efforts to affirmatively further fair housing and expand fair housing protections on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, presence of children, and source of income. CHN supports strong renter protections to address the power imbalance between renters and landlords. CHN supports full implementation of the Section 3 Economic Opportunities for Low- and Very Low-Income Persons obligation to provide job training, employment, and contracting opportunities for low and very low- income residents. CHN supports increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the use of the Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) and other efforts to bring greater energy efficiency and climate resilience to federally-assisted housing properties and the homes of low-income households. CHN supports assistance to enable households with low incomes to pay their water bills, and to prevent water shutoffs and liens from water debt. CHN supports additional measures to ensure access to sustainable homeownership. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes any proposals or activities that would reduce or limit access to homes affordable and available to people with the lowest incomes, including federally assisted homes or rental assistance. CHN opposes any proposals that would weaken income targeting, increase residents rents, negatively impact housing stability, restrict immigrant families access to federal housing programs, or impose work requirements on residents or time limits on assistance.
• CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. These programs provide essential services, with special attention to the needs of people with low incomes, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities. CHN opposes policies that give states incentives to take away income assistance from people via changes to TANF.
• CHN supports expanding full access to all workforce development programs and services authorized under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the National Apprenticeship Act to undocumented immigrant workers and reaffirming access for DACA recipients, TPS recipients, and all other new Americans. CHN supports greater alignment of workforce development, postsecondary, and human services programs, including child care assistance, to create pathways to marketable postsecondary credentials and economic security for adults with low incomes and opportunity youth. CHN supports the development of one or more official measures of the income needed to reach a decent living standard that provides for the maintenance of health and social well-being, childrens care and development, and social participation, and that is substantially above both the supplemental poverty line and the outmoded official poverty line.
• CHN supports legislation that helps prevent child abuse and neglect and other family crises, strengthens supports for vulnerable children, youth and families at risk of entering the child welfare system, increases access to substance use disorder and mental health services and treatment for children and parents, promotes care in the most family-like settings, strengthens the capacity of the child welfare workforce to respond to the special needs of children and families, promotes permanency and post-permanency services and assists women experiencing domestic violence and their children who witness it. CHN supports the reauthorization of and full funding for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), Title IV-B Subpart 1 Stephanie Tubbs Jones Child Welfare Services (CWS) and the TItle IV-B Subpart 2 MaryLee Allen Promoting Safe and Stable Families (PSSF) programs. CHN supports robust implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018, to expand access to prevention services and ensure children are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. CHN supports engaging people with lived experience in the child welfare system in the policymaking process. CHN supports policies that expand the availability of high-quality trauma-informed services for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. CHN supports the protections for children in the Indian Child Welfare Act and policies that promote race equity in the child welfare system. CHN supports policies that promote placing children with kin when possible and that provide the same level of support for kin caregivers as for non-kin foster families. CHN supports efforts to expand the Guardianship Assistance Program in all states. CHN supports increased funding for recruitment, training, and retention of a diverse pool of foster parents, particularly those for special populations such as sibling groups, children and youth with special behavioral health needs, and adolescent and teen populations, and of foster parents or other specialized placements for victims of sex trafficking. CHN supports policies that improve access to high-quality legal representation for children and families involved with the child welfare system. CHN supports reauthorization and increased funding for the Court Improvement Program. CHN supports efforts to extend foster care to age 21 in all states and to increase funding for the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for successful Transition to Adulthood, including increased funding for Education and Training Vouchers. CHN supports full funding for the Violence Against Women Act, the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services formula grants, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes conversion of child welfare services and foster care entitlement funding into a state block grant. CHN opposes discrimination in the recruitment and placement of adoptive and foster parents and any practices that would harm youth who identify as LGBTQ and repealing regulations and guidance that allowed such discrimination.
• CHN supports access to safe and affordable bank accounts, prepaid cards, mobile payments, electronic payments, remittance services and other transaction products and services, including through public institutions like the Postal Service.
• CHN supports improvements and expansions in mandatory programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Affordable Care Act, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and child nutrition services, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and child welfare and family support programs. The Coalition on Human Needs opposes restrictive structural changes such as block grants, per capita caps or vouchers, as well as dollar cuts in critical human needs programs that would hamper their effectiveness or their ability to serve eligible families and individuals in essential entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), SNAP, unemployment insurance, TANF, and SSI. CHN opposes waivers that would undermine the individual entitlement to benefits. CHN supports a thorough reversal of existing waiver policies that encourage states to impose work requirements, cost sharing and other measures intended to deny benefits, in contradiction of the basic purpose of programs, and supports ensuring that waiver requests from states are only approved if they are consistent with underlying law and accompanied by effective evaluation. As millions are losing access to Medicaid and CHIP, due to the mass eligibility checks being implemented due to the end of the public health emergency, CHN supports efforts to maintain coverage.
• CHN supports additional funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Duration: April 15, 2019 to present

General Issues: Agriculture, Budget/Appropriations, Civil Rights/Civil Liberties, Defense, Immigration, Labor Issues/Antitrust/Workplace, Taxation/Internal Revenue Code, Education, Health Issues, Housing, Welfare, Economics/Economic Development, Family Issues/Abortion/Adoption, Postal, Medicare/Medicaid, Telecommunications, Disaster Planning/Emergencies, Consumer Issues/Safety/Protection, Accounting, Homeland Security, Unemployment

Spending: about $0 (But it's complicated. Here's why.)

It can be tricky to figure out how much an organization spent on a particular lobbying engagement. The law only requires lobbyists to report the amount they were paid for federal lobbying each quarter rounded to the nearest $10,000—and if it's less than $3,000 in a given quarter (or less than $13,000 for organizations with in-house lobbyists), they don't have to disclose it at all. Plus, some organizations include spending that doesn’t belong in the report—for instance, money spent lobbying state governments or other legal work.

Agencies lobbied since 2019: House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Office of Management & Budget (OMB), Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), Agriculture - Dept of (USDA), White House Office, Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives, Treasury - Dept of, Homeland Security - Dept of (DHS), Justice - Dept of (DOJ), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Health & Human Services - Dept of (HHS), Bureau of the Census, Administration for Children & Families (ACF), Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)