Issue Position: Spending and Priorities

Issue Position

Our budget is a reflection of our priorities. Therefore our spending and investments should reflect our values.

Monetary return is not the only bottom line for our pension fund. What about our climate bottom line? What about our justice bottom line? What about sustainability? We should be directing our public investments to reflect our public priorities, and the more we reward companies that are doing the right thing, the more companies will do the right thing. As a public entity, we are investing for the long term. If we ignore the planet, no other bottom line will matter.

The Commonwealth also has the power to influence decisions at the national level. We must use this influence to pressure Congress to pass a People's Budget that accurately reflects our national priorities. Almost 90% of nurses in one survey from May reported that they had to reuse disposable respirators or masks around a patient with Covid and almost ¾ reported they had exposed skin while interacting with Covid patients due to PPE shortages. Our communities value frontline healthcare workers, and if our spending does not support their safety, we must not support our current spending.

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