March, 30 2021, 12:00am EDT

FACT SHEET: Why Sunrise is Demanding $1Trillion/Year Over the Next Decade
Biden, Harris, and Senate Democrats just made history passing the American Rescue Plan, spending $1.9 trillion to provide much needed relief amidst the COVID public health and economic crises. But this $1.9 trillion merely keeps the economy afloat and makes sure people can keep food on the table.
WASHINGTON
Biden, Harris, and Senate Democrats just made history passing the American Rescue Plan, spending $1.9 trillion to provide much needed relief amidst the COVID public health and economic crises. But this $1.9 trillion merely keeps the economy afloat and makes sure people can keep food on the table.
Not only are people still acutely suffering even after this stop-gap support, but our economy and infrastructure are reeling from decades of disinvestment and privatization. On top of all this, scientists tell us that we must transform every aspect of our infrastructure and economy over the next 10 years in order to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis and preserve life on earth as we know it. Economists agree -- the risk in this moment is not doing too much, but too little. A new economic analysis shows that investments of this scale towards our economic, infrastructure, and environmental crises is the bare minimum of what's needed to get on track. And if we neglect investment now, costs and consequences will only be greater and more destructive.
Indications from the White House point towards Biden introducing an infrastructure plan to invest somewhere around $3-4 trillion. While that's not an insignificant number, it pales in comparison to the scale of the crises we face, and what science and justice demand. In particular, if we're serious about tackling the climate crisis, which Joe Biden has said is the top priority of his Presidency, we must rapidly mobilize to transform every aspect of our economy, society, and infrastructure over the next decade. In the last year of World War II, America spent 40% of our GDP in one year on the war -- equivalent to nearly $8.5 trillion in 2021 alone. The task of transforming our economy and rescuing our planet from the brink of collapse are just as existential to our country now as the war effort was then. $10 trillion over the next decade, or $1 trillion per year, should be the minimum of what we invest towards that task.
If we're serious about actually tackling our nation's crises and "Building Back Better," like Joe Biden promised, we need to solve problems in their entirety, not just put dents in them. Here are some examples of bills that take an approach of actually transforming our economy at the scale necessary:
- Public Transit: Senators Warren and Markey, and Reps. Andy Levin and Ocasio-Cortez's BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act invests in a new sustainable and electric public transit infrastructure. ($500 billion)
- Vehicle Electrification: Senator Schumer's Clean Cars for America plan establishes a vehicle trade-in program for electric vehicles and invests in domestic EV manufacturing and charging infrastructure ($454 billion).
- Public Housing: Senator Sanders and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal for Public Housing Act to modernize and expand America's public housing stock ($180 billion).
- 21st Century Schools: Rep. Bowman proposes a Green Stimulus to retrofit and upgrade all K-12 Schools ($1.16 trillion).
- Clean Water Infrastructure: Senator Sanders and Reps. Lawrence and Khanna's WATER Act upgrades our nation's shameful and diminished clean water infrastructure to ensure universal clean water in America ($350 billion).
- And in his campaign, Biden already committed to a $300 billion investment in technology Research and Development and $775 billion in building the infrastructure of the care economy.
These proposals already add up to over $3.7 trillion investment and are only scratching the surface of what is needed to truly build the 21st century economy we need. For example, this does not factor in upgrading our private housing and building stocks, transitioning our power sector and electrical grid, upgrading roads and bridges, or investing in farmers, public lands and waters, and conservation.
On top of all this, with so much work to be done, it's time for the government to guarantee good jobs for all. Establishing or enhancing public employment programs to directly put Americans to work in serving the public interest, including the robust funding of a Civilian Climate Corps and a Public Health Jobs Corps will protect people from the risk of unemployment and establishes a labor force to do the critical work of building green infrastructure and caring for one another. It's the best way for us to marshal the full resources of our government and people to transition our energy grid and transform our society, especially as our country deals with a massive loss of jobs, many of which may never return. This must be factored into the cost of an infrastructure package.
In sum, it is clear that if Biden is serious about transforming our economy and building back better, a much greater scale of investment is needed. Sunrise Movement expects a $10 trillion investment in infrastructure, both material and social, over the next decade to meet this moment and take on the crises we as a nation are facing.
Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
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Israeli forces ramped up their genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip Monday, killing at least 95 Palestinians in attacks including massacres at a seaside café and a humanitarian aid distribution center and bombings of five school shelters housing displaced families and a hospital where refugees were sheltering in tents.
An Israeli strike targeted the al-Baqa Café in western Gaza City, one of the few operating businesses remaining after 633 days of Israel's obliteration of the coastal strip and a popular gathering place for journalists, university students, artists, and others seeking reliable internet service and a respite from nearly 21 months of near-relentless attacks.
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Warning: Photos shows image of death
Survivor Ali Abu Ateila toldThe Associated Press that the café was crowded with women and children at the time of the attack.
"Without a warning, all of a sudden, a warplane hit the place, shaking it like an earthquake," he said.
Another survivor of the massacre told Britain's Sky News: "All I see is blood... Unbelievable. People come here to take a break from what they see inside Gaza. They come westward to breathe."
Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Nayrab toldAgence France-Presse that a "huge explosion shook the area."
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"We were targeted by artillery," survivor Monzer Hisham Ismail told The Associated Press. Another survivor, Yousef Mahmoud Mokheimar, told the AP that Israeli troops "fired at us indiscriminately." Mokheimar was shot in the leg, another man who tried to rescue him was also shot.
IDF troops have killed nearly 600 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded more than 4,000 others over the past month, with Israeli military officers and soldiers saying they were ordered to deliberately fire on civilians in search of food and other necessities amid Israel's weaponized starvation of Gaza.
Another 13 people were reportedly killed Monday when IDF warplanes bombed an aid warehouse in the Zeitoun quarter of southern Gaza City, according to al-Ahli Baptist Hospital officials cited by The Palestine Chronicle. IDF warplanes also reportedly bombed five schools housing displaced families, three of them in Zeitoun. Israeli forces also bombed the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinian families are sheltering in tents. It was reportedly the 12th time the hospital has been bombed since the start of the war.
The World Health Organization has documented more than 700 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities since October 2023. Most of Gaza's hospitals are out of service due to Israeli attacks, some of which have been called genocidal by United Nations experts.
Israel's overall behavior in the war is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including murder and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 204,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including over 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried under rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, whose casualty figures have been found to be generally accurate and even a likely undercount by peer-reviewed studies.
The intensified IDF attacks follow Israel's issuance of new forced evacuation orders amid the ongoing Operation Gideon's Chariots, an ongoing offensive which aims to conquer and indefinitely occupy all of Gaza and ethnically cleanse much of its population, possibly to make way for Jewish recolonization as advocated by many right-wing Israelis.
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Gaza officials have reported that hundreds of Palestinians—including at least 66 children—have died in Gaza from malnutrition and lack of medicine since Israel ratcheted up its siege in early March. Earlier this month, the United Nations Children's Fund warned that childhood malnutrition was "rising at an alarming rate," with 5,119 children under the age of 5 treated for the life-threatening condition in May alone. Of those treated children, 636 were diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition, the most lethal form of the condition.
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In addition to Tlaib, the letter to Rubio was signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Democratic Reps. Greg Casar (Texas), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Al Green (Texas), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Henry "Hank"Johnson (Ga.), Summer Lee (Pa.), Jim McGovern (Mass.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), Mark Pocan (Wisc.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Paul Tonko (N.Y.), Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
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Some of the names on the list of people crafting the agenda—named Project 2029, an echo of the far-right Project 2025 blueprint Trump is currently enacting—left progressives with deepened concerns that party insiders have "learnt nothing" and "forgotten nothing" from the president's electoral victories against centrist Democratic candidates over the past decade, as one economist said.
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After democratic socialist and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani's (D-36) surprise win against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in New York City's mayoral primary election—following a campaign with a clear-eyed focus on making childcare, rent, public transit, and groceries more affordable—New York City has emerged as a battleground in the fight. Influential Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) have so far refused to endorse him and attacked him for his unequivocal support for Palestinian rights.
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