Congressional Republicans have a plan to fill part of the giant deficit hole created by their tax plan for the wealthy; open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to commercial drilling. Their plan is a shortsighted tactic that arcane budget rules and will ultimately fail to live up to expectations. In fact, early estimates based on recent lease bids of neighboring plots of land underscore how selling these precious protected lands to commercial drilling could generate underwhelming revenues.

Budgets proposed by the Trump administration and House and Senate Republicans would all drastically slash federal investment in nondefense discretionary (NDD) funding. NDD funding includes infrastructure, education, and medical and scientific research, among other programs critical to American families and the economy. Senate Republicans have proposed slashing NDD spending by $800 billion over the next decade, House Republicans by nearly $1.4 trillion, and President Trump by more than $1.5 trillion. The President’s budget would bring NDD spending down to 2 percent of GDP, the lowest level in modern history by a wide margin.

It has been 69 days since Congress failed to reauthorize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides coverage for 8.9 million children across the country. Last week, Colorado became the first state to notify families that they are in danger of losing coverage, and many others may follow. If Congress fails to fully fund CHIP, 36 states and D.C. will exhaust their existing 2017 federal funds by March of next year.

Deferred Action Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients play a large role in rural communities, where their economic contributions are helping rural towns get back on their feet from years of slow eco-nomic growth. In rural America, these estimated tens of thousands of young people are part of the answer to building sustainable economies in small towns across the country.