In the current heated debate over raising the debt limit in 2023, Our SMCDFA Member - Greg Loew gave us good background information on what makes up the U.S. Budget.

FY2014 and FY2024 Proposed Federal Budgets (G.Loew, 4/8/2023)

The two budgets shown below for comparison are both proposals. The FY2014 Obama budget eventually passed with minor bipartisan changes. Nobody knows yet what will happen with Biden’s FY 2024 budget. The increases in ten years can be explained by some real growth, some cumulative inflation (27%), rising interest rates, and some increases due to Covid, the war in Ukraine, global warming, and additional social needs. In recent years the national debt increased the most rapidly because of Trump’s tax cuts.

Recognizing the need for a clear statement of our values and a vision of the America we believe in, the members of SMCDFA devoted two months in the fall of 2017 to creating the following document:

What Democrats Will Fight For

1. Economic Security and Equity

•  Democrats believe that all workers in the U.S. are entitled to a living wage, equal

opportunity, equal pay for equal work, and that the economy must benefit
everyone, not just the top 1%.

•  Tax reform must be designed to decrease the large disparity between rich and

poor, and to provide a robust safety net for children, the unemployed, the
marginalized and the homeless.

•  Social Security and other pension systems must be protected so that all senior

citizens can retire and live with dignity.

•  Dodd-Frank and consumer protection regulations must be strengthened and

enforced to protect the American economy from the abuses of Wall Street and
fraudulent business.

•  Workers and collective bargaining rights of workers/unions, both domestically

and in international treaties and trade agreements, must be protected.

•  Public education from pre-school to community college, including trade schools,

must be free, and state universities should be made far more affordable for all

admitted students.

2. Health Care for All and Reproductive Rights

•  Democrats believe universal health care is a human right, and Medicare and

Medicaid must be protected.

• The ACA (“Obamacare”) must be improved to cover all citizens and residents,

and eventually lead to a less costly, single-payer Medicare-for- all or equivalent
system, with negotiated drug prices.

•  “A woman’s right to choose” must be inalienable, and contraception should be

included in health plans to be accessible upon demand.

3. Environmental Protection

• Democrats believe that protecting the environment is essential to our future

and are committed to dealing with the climate crisis to save the planet.

• As global warming caused by humans is becoming a worldwide existential threat,

the federal and state governments must enact and enforce taxes and laws to decrease

the use of fossil fuels and promote renewable sources of energy, and the U.S. must rejoin

the Paris agreement.

4. Free and Fair Elections with Voting Rights for All Citizens

• All citizens must be able to vote and have their votes counted securely, and all efforts

at voter suppression must be opposed.

• The current corrupting system of money in politics must be eliminated, and a

system of publicly funded election campaigns should replace it.

5. Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Public Safety

• The federal and state governments must enact and enforce all laws that ban any

form of ethnic, gender and LGBTQ discrimination.

• The criminal justice and prison systems must be reformed to decrease prison

population and recidivism, prison privatization must be abolished, and the failing
“war on drugs” must be replaced by a more effective system.

• Immigration laws must be reformed, giving a road to citizenship to the

undocumented; international laws on the rights of migrants must be respected.

• The number of refugees properly vetted to be admitted to the U.S. must be

increased, not decreased.

• The public is entitled to protection from all forms of domestic and foreign

terrorism, to the ban of privately-held assault weapons, and to a significant
reduction in gun violence through a system of vigorously enforced background
checks.

6. International Relations

• The U.S. must promote international collaboration and world peace through the

U.N., rejoin UNESCO, assist allies and needy nations, pursue a policy of peaceful
negotiations over war whenever possible, combat human rights violations, and
work toward the full abolition of nuclear weapons.

San Mateo County Democracy for America

November, 2017