Tell your Senators and President Biden: No Recess Until We Build Back Better and Vote Better
Call BOTH of your Senators.
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Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
To President Biden:
You are convening a Democracy Summit this week, after using the American Rescue Plan and the (hopefully largely intact) Build Back Better Act to demonstrate that democracies can deliver on improving the lives of their own people. However, your summit also follows a report from Freedom House highlighting our dangerous national decline in terms of civil liberties and voting rights. “Discussing the threats to democracy without reference to partisanship is like describing Jim Crow without referring to race. States are not enacting voter suppression laws in a vacuum — these laws are being enacted by Republican politicians over the objections of Democrats,” as Marc Elias observes. We are running out of time to face those facts and save our democracy. If the Senate doesn’t pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act by the time they take their recess, I urge you to declare that you will convene a special session of Congress in early January to pass both bills.
To Our Senators:
Don’t quit until the job is done. I expect you not to go on recess until you pass the Build Back Better Act to build on the progress that the American Rescue Plan began, and address the critical issue of voting rights.
American democracy requires two functioning parties, and right now, the Republican Party doesn’t qualify as small-d democratic. They’re determined to restrict voting rights for partisan advantage, and their response to voters turning out in record numbers in 2020 despite existing voter suppression laws and the pandemic, has been to enact even more voting restrictions and add violent threats and intimidation to the mix. Voters nationwide need you to protect our chance to keep the Biden Recovery going and vote safely.
Background
“Discussing the threats to democracy without reference to partisanship is like describing Jim Crow without referring to race. States are not enacting voter suppression laws in a vacuum — these laws are being enacted by Republican politicians over the objections of Democrats,” as voting rights attorney Marc Elias observes. Democratic consultants and some members of Congress seem to want to divorce partisanship from voting rights and democracy because it makes the threat seem more easily solved by compromise and appeals to right and wrong. But that concept has already failed several times this year: Senator Manchin has seen it and so have we. Viewing elections only as political competitions with winners and losers but not a clear right and wrong avoids culpability for the resulting loss of democracy. Those who stand back and do nothing become part of what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as “the greatest tragedy” in the last civil rights struggle: “the appalling silence of the good people.” It’s time for Senate Democrats to get real and get tough on protecting our voting rights. We would love to see that happen before the end of the year, but the Senate has a jam-packed agenda this year.
President Biden has achieved remarkable things and helped Americans in all 50 states with his American Rescue Plan. The Build Back Better Act would dramatically improve our quality of life even further by expanding some of its best features, like the Child Care Tax Credit checks, and adding child care cost caps, expanding Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium cost caps, and closing the Medicaid coverage gap in the 12 states that have not already expanded it. The BBBA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will further prove to voters nationwide that Democrats deliver. That’s why Senate Republicans have been doing their best to obstruct it.
We need all Senate Democrats united to pass the BBBA by the end of the year, as Senator Schumer has said he wants to do. However, famous obstructionist Senators Manchin and Sinema consider that timeline ambitious. The Senate Parliamentarian is still reviewing the bill’s immigration and healthcare provisions. And Senate Republicans, unable to defeat Biden’s mandate on vaccination for federal employees and contractors, are using the Congressional Review Act to force a vote to defeat the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s vaccination mandate and have gotten Senator Manchin to support that effort.
Senate Republicans are even holding up the usually sacrosanct defense bill (NDAA) with amendments. Senator Schumer has told his Democratic colleagues that he plans to pass the NDAA by the end of this week, perhaps through a deal worked out informally by the House Armed Services Committee leadership. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress that lawmakers only have until December 15 to raise the debt ceiling, so Senate leaders have also discussed linking it to the NDAA, but House leadership and Senate Republicans are opposing that idea. Some outside groups have predicted the debt ceiling issue could be pushed into January.
The Senate has a lot on its plate before the end of the year, including nominations the Republicans have been stalling. But the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act are ready to go, so we are hoping Senate Democrats can wake up to the anti-democratic extremism of the modern Republican Party and pass those bills by the end of the year too.
References
This week: Congress poised to go into December overtime, The Hill, 12/06/21
Senate eyes plan B amid defense bill standoff, The Hill, 12/03/21
It Is Time To Admit That Democracy Is a Partisan Issue, Democracy Docket, Marc Elias, 12/03/21
Letters: California needs Dianne Feinstein to step up on voting rights or resign, SF Chronicle, 12/03/21
President Biden to Convene Leaders' Summit for Democracy, The White House, 8/11/21
From Crisis to Reform: A Call to Strengthen America’s Battered Democracy, Freedom House, 2021
Opinion | How the GOP threatens harm to red-state residents, as revealed in a new study, Washington Post, 12/1/21
Study: What Build Back Better Means for Families in Every State – Third Way