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Podcast: How the budget mess in Congress hurts all of us

Podcast: How the budget mess in Congress hurts all of us

This year the federal government is expected to collect more than $3.5 trillion in taxes— a vast amount of money by any measure. One of the key functions of Congress is to pass a budget. But often that seems close to impossible.


Lack of agreement over federal spending regularly threatens to bring about government shutdowns that have a negative impact on millions of Americans. Yet few of us can even begin to understand the byzantine budget process.
Both of our guests in this episode have worked with other policy experts to make the budget process function better, with greater efficiency and transparency.



Alison Acosta Winters is a fiscal conservative and was most recently a senior policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity. Emily Holubowich is vice president for federal advocacy at the American Heart Association, and often supports more government spending.


Brought together by Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, Alison, Emily and other stakeholders from diverse backgrounds spent months working together to come up with several major proposals for overhauling the budget process.

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FEMA Review Council Proposes Long List of Reforms to Federal Disaster Assistance

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Headquarters Building in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

FEMA Review Council Proposes Long List of Reforms to Federal Disaster Assistance

WASHINGTON — Nearly a year after President Donald Trump threatened to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a review council he appointed released a final report on Thursday to overhaul the agency by reducing administrative costs and shifting responsibility for disaster response to states.

The review council was created in January 2025 through Executive Order 14180. According to the order, the council, led by Homeland Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, was tasked with evaluating and improving the agency's efficacy and disaster response.

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What Will It Take To Truly Negotiate Paid Leave? Getting to "Yes" on Three Questions
blue and yellow i heart you print textile
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

What Will It Take To Truly Negotiate Paid Leave? Getting to "Yes" on Three Questions

Everyone in the United States deserves time to care for themselves and their loved ones, whether to see a baby’s first smile or hold the hand of a parent who takes their last. Last month, Virginia became one of a growing number of U.S. jurisdictions enacting statewide paid leave programs—forward-looking states that have taken matters into their own hands in the absence of a federal policy that the vast majority of the public across party lines wants and has wanted for quite some time.

Beginning in 2028, Virginia will join its regional mid-Atlantic neighbors, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York in guaranteeing this basic protection to millions of workers caring for a new child, a loved one, or their own serious health need. Pennsylvania’s legislature, too, is moving paid leave legislation, and with bipartisan support. Evidence shows that paid family and medical leave programs offer multiple sources of value to workers, families, businesses, and communities.

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DHS Funding During the Shutdown
Getty Images, Charles-McClintock Wilson

DHS Funding During the Shutdown

When Congress failed to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of this fiscal year in February, almost all of its employees began to work without pay. That situation changed, however, on April 3, when President Donald Trump issued a memorandum ordering the DHS secretary and director of the Office of Management and Budget to “use funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to the functions of DHS” to pay its employees and issue back pay.

Trump shifted money to avoid the political embarrassment that would be caused by the collapse of airport security screening through the actions of disgruntled agents and the disruption to air travel that would ensue. But it’s legally dubious.

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From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Journalists gather in front of the Connecticut State Capitol Building during a press conference on SB259 and an anti-FGM art installation

Bryna Subherwal, Equality Now

From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas

Across the Americas, hundreds of thousands of women and girls are living with or have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). These affected populations are citizens and residents of countries where protections are incomplete, entirely focused on criminalisation, inconsistently enforced, or entirely absent.

FGM is not a “foreign” issue. It is a human rights violation unfolding within national borders, one that all governments in the Americas have the legal and moral responsibility to address.

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