Tell your Senators: Don’t Let Republican Partisanship Destroy the Economy!
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.
Don’t Let Republican Partisanship Destroy the Economy!
Don’t allow the GOP to kill the House continuing resolution (HR.5305) by filibuster.
If it becomes necessary, use the Nuclear Option to carve out a filibuster exemption for debt ceiling legislation and budgetary continuing resolutions. And if there’s a way to do it, repeal the debt-ceiling law itself so that we never again can our economy be held hostage by partisan blackmail.
Background
The federal government can only spend money that Congress has authorized and appropriated. The government’s current fiscal year ends at midnight Thursday (September 30). At the stroke of midnight, all federal spending authorizations and appropriations expire. Unless Congress passes an extension called a “continuing resolution” (CR) by that deadline, on Friday morning major portions of the federal government will shut down because they are no longer allowed to spend money.
In all but a very, very few years, Congress appropriates and the government spends more than it takes in as revenue. To cover that shortfall, they borrow money to make up the difference. The difference between what the government spends and what it takes in is called the “deficit” and the total amount owed is the “debt.” A family or business that consistently spends more than it takes in will collapse into bankruptcy. But governments are different: for them a moderate amount of deficit spending is actually beneficial to We the People and to the government itself—so long as the government is allowed to continue borrowing to cover the difference as governments all around the world routinely do.
Yet more than 100 years ago, Congress passed a really dumb law setting an upper limit (a “debt ceiling”) to how much the government can owe and borrow. Ever since then, Congress has to keep increasing that limit because, if they don’t, the United States will default on its fiscal obligations with dire economic consequences for all of us. It’s as if some idiot built an economic time bomb in the basement of our building—an economic bomb that is now counting down to zero. So Congress has to add more time to the clock by passing a law to raise the debt ceiling. (Of course, they could simply turn off the bomb by repealing the debt ceiling law, but for some reason they’re politically scared of taking such a bold step.)
Fortunately, last week the House passed HR.5305, a CR that not only prevents a government shutdown until at least the end of this year but suspends the debt ceiling time bomb until the end of 2022. And it also provides emergency disaster aid for those impacted by the recent fires, hurricanes, and floods. And it provides resettlement aid for the refugees who managed to escape Afghanistan before the Taliban seized power. So of course Republicans are threatening to filibuster and kill it because … well, no one really knows why other than that they hate Biden, the Democrats, and people like us.
References
House passes bill to prevent shutdown and suspend debt limit: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/573306-house-passes-bill-to-prevent-shutdown-and-suspend-debt-limit
H.R.5305 - Extending Government Funding and Delivering Emergency Assistance Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5305
ISF’s Nuclear Option Explainer: https://indivisiblesf.org/blog/2021/9/28/the-nuclear-option-explained