In the News

The Congressional Black Caucus prioritizes education, public health and deficit reduction—in contrast with the GOP plan, which guts the social safety net.

In the Congressional Black Caucus’ Alternative Budget for Fiscal Year 2016, which lays out where the CBC thinks the nation’s finances should be, it finds itself—yet again—in the unenviable position of voiceless “Malcolm in the Middle” screaming through white noise and clamor. The plan is captured in five high-level bullet points: a fairer tax code; slaying the sequestration dragon; creating jobs; eliminating poverty; reducing the deficit.

Block a half-hour to read it.

As unrealistic as it might seem, there’s no escaping how refreshing it is, in an age of gloomy debt projections, belt-tightening and a rampant stinginess, to follow the CBC formula and find reprieve. There’s an optimistic assumption that we can find $2.7 trillion in “new revenue” under the federal mattress—soon after locating several fair-tax-code paths to $5.6 trillion in revenue enhancements. Using the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office baseline as a marker, the CBC projections look for deficit reduction to the tune of $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years.

The problem, however, is getting Capitol Hill—now in a full conservative straitjacket—to give the CBC budget the time of day. It’s an obstacle to which the thick-skinned CBC has grown accustomed, sometimes at its own peril. It’s not as if there’s any expectation that Congress, in its present form, will ever pass that budget.

But that’s why “it’s an alternative budget,” claims CBC Chair G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) in describing it to The Root. “It’s a value statement for the caucus, and overall, it’s a test of how we are as a country and where we want to be.”

The CBC is already in a perpetually tough spot. Being black in Congress—nearly impossible just a little over 50 years ago—is always an uphill battle. Each year presents higher stakes, and this latest CBC Alternative Budget could conceivably hold more urgency than the last, given the fevered pitch of recent community tensions with law enforcement.

At first glance, it probably doesn’t. If you’re looking for a protest-movement difference between this CBC budget and the last, you may walk away disappointed—although it does find $50 billion for first-responder and law-enforcement jobs, in a nod to the need for more cops of color. Still, political theater is not really the point of this exercise; what matters is consistency and clarity. This is not a bold or ornery activist document. It’s not the dawn of some fresh fiscal awakening. Nor is it easily identifiable as a boat rocker.

“But it’s always an opportunity to see where our friends stand on these issues,” says Butterfield, eager for, at least, a vote on it to see just that.

It is translucent, considerate and pragmatic—a simplistic, take-care-of-it-from-the-front-end model that’s missing in Washington, D.C., debate these days. If the nation won’t invest in higher education through relatively inexpensive lifts like Pell Grant increases, the CBC budget suggests, the nation then misses out on educated future taxpayers. If we fail to make investments in public health, we miss out on reducing the deficit by $118 billion. If we’re cutting up everything in the present, we lose out on possibilities in the future. There are moments throughout the CBC budget when it struggles to sell the benefits by aligning every cost with a saving. It tries.

And in that attempt, it remains a fairly digestible budget compared with most. If you were to try to brand it with a theme or soundtrack, you could say this budget is as much about showing the money as it is about spending it. You won’t have to go broke eliminating poverty or preserving the social safety net because the funds, notes the CBC budget, are already there.