The Coalition on Human Needs is a nonpartisan organization. We do not endorse candidates, but we know that elected officials will make crucial decisions that will affect everyone in the U.S. We have urged people to look for – and vote for – candidates who will invest in expanded health care and housing, who will protect people from hunger, and make it easier for families to care for their children and their aging or disabled relatives. Soon, we will know who gets elected. Whatever the outcome, we will have a lot of work to do.

A great many powerful players are standing ready to push government to reflect their interests – whether still more tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, or gutting regulations that protect consumers, reducing funding for human needs programs, or limiting democratic rights. They know that pushing their agenda forward takes work month after month, not just on election day. Advocates for the non-wealthy need to know that too.

As soon as the return of Congress immediately after the election, and continuing through 2025 and beyond, there will be critical decision points. Will we make sure that basic needs programs have the funding they need? Will we be able to defeat those who will threaten government shutdowns or default if they don’t get the cuts and restrictions they want?

In the past, CHN has brought advocates together in successful efforts either to prevent cuts and restrictions or to expand benefits and services. Here are some examples, newest first:

• CHN worked with advocates focused on programs needing adequate appropriations, helping to fight against cuts in WIC (Women, Infants, and Children nutrition), rental housing, and many other programs, as well as a successful effort to prevent restrictive policy language in funding bills, significantly adding to the number of advocates speaking out on these issues (encouraging over 120,000 actions over a several month period earlier this year).
• During the pandemic, CHN established weekly Zoom meetings of key advocates (usually with at least 150 attending each week) to share information and build support for increased funding for a full range of human needs programs. Information was shared more broadly through regular emails and the Voices for Human Needs blog. CHN led or supported joint letters signed by hundreds of organizations nationwide and built a program of hundreds of thousands of emails by individuals in support of expansions of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, nutrition and housing assistance, unemployment insurance, access to health care, and much more.
• During the Trump presidency from 2017-2020, numerous attempts to cut or restrict programs by administrative regulations were thwarted because of advocacy efforts to submit large numbers of comments during public comment periods. Agency staff are required to read and respond to individualized comments, which slows down the process of finalizing regulations. CHN added to these efforts, and was one of the first organizations to utilize “click and send” individual comments, resulting in thousands of comments submitted in opposition to restrictive measures. (While staff don’t have to respond to multiple identical comments, administrations worry if they see evidence of widespread opposition.) CHN contributed to the efforts of the organization Protecting Immigrant Families to encourage close to 190,000 comments to oppose certain anti-immigrant measures, and also created comment templates to oppose Trump’s immigrant family separation policies. These efforts prevented some of these restrictive measures and paved the way for more humane rules later.

CHN has done this work for decades, making a unique effort to educate advocates across the country through webinars, listservs, and analyses so they understand how critical federal decisions are made, and how they can weigh in.

We have continued to build our coalition, with an email list of 17,000 in human needs organizations nationwide, a much larger list of hundreds of thousands of concerned individuals, and active listservs of key allies. Over a recent six-month period, more than a half million actions were taken by advocates on economic and social justice issues.

We must get ready to do more. In the coming months we will face renewed attempts to require harsh cuts in nutrition, health care and other programs. As in the past, some may threaten to force a catastrophic government default or shutdown if cuts are not made. Multi-trillion dollar tax cuts enacted during the Trump years will be expiring, an important opportunity to increase taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations, and to oppose powerful interests who will try to add more tax breaks at the top of the income scale. Clearly, the outcome of the election will make a big difference in what we will face, but we must be prepared for any scenario. In a closely divided federal government, there may be more risks than opportunities, but advocates can and must be ready for both.

Getting ready means even more coalition-building to benefit from the diverse policy, field, and communications strengths of organizations nationwide. We must be able to talk about how expanded investments help or how cuts will hurt real people and their communities, learning from people whose lives would be affected, and sharing analyses of the impact of proposed cuts or expansions. We need more service providers, community leaders, people of faith, workers, and families to join in and speak out. Most important, we need to maximize opportunities for people who need the assistance government can provide to speak for themselves and be heard by their elected leaders. We will need to make a lot of meaningful noise, showing Congress and the new administration that lots of people care about the decisions they will make.

The Coalition on Human Needs has expanded its reach because organizations trust us to provide practical and timely information about federal decision-making and to help them participate. The work leading up to the election will be over soon, we hope, but the work to hold our leaders accountable to meet their constituents’ needs – that can’t stop.