Congress must make good choices

Right now members of Congress are negotiating the budget, and the Trump administration wants to use our tax dollars to finance its anti-immigrant agenda in the FY2019 budget, including $5 billion for a wall, while continuously proposing devastating cuts to health, education and other essential programs that are critical to healthy, thriving families and communities.

The wall is not just a hateful symbol of exclusion and a waste of billions of dollars that could be used instead to improve the health and education of children. It also will be a disaster for the environment, killing wildlife by interfering with migration patterns and impeding access to food and water. It will cause dangerous flooding and endanger the lives of border residents.

Our tax dollars should be used to improve our schools, child care and health care, not to finance the Trump administration’s heartless anti-immigrant policies. For example, Congress could use the $5 billion requested for a wall to instead fund a 30 percent increase in federal aid for K-12 public schools.

Congress should focus our government spending on programs that lift children and families, and must act as a check on cruel anti-immigrant policies, starting with this budget.

Christopher Lawrence

Spokane