Tell your Senators: No Surrender to Republican Blackmail! Fund Democratic Priorities!
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.
Republican obstruction of the appropriation process is a form of economic terrorism and blackmail designed to ram through their ultra-conservative, extreme right-wing agenda regardless of what voters want. History teaches us that giving in to terrorists and paying off blackmailers inevitably leads to more terrorism and more blackmail. Do not surrender. Do not give in to them:
No Republican “poison pills” in any Continuing Resolution (CR), such as the Hyde Amendment, and no bar against funding public-health emergency measures such as mask-mandates.
Do not allow Republicans to separate out and pass the three appropriation bills they love — Defense, Homeland Security, and Agriculture subsidies — without passing the other nine.
Reduce total defense spending and redirect those funds to defending us from the real and immediate climate-emergency threats that we are facing and suffering from right now. Do not surrender to Republican demands for “defense - non-defense parity.” During the Trump regime, the military budget was jacked way up while domestic programs were slashed. Republicans were opposed to parity when it meant more billions for defense corporations and less money for human needs; their call now for “parity” is blatant hypocrisy.
Background
Normally, the federal government is funded by twelve different appropriation bills, each of which funds different sets of departments and agencies. According to a law that Congress often ignores, those twelve bills are supposed to be passed by October 1 of the previous year. But Republicans are determined to sabotage the Biden presidency and they are adamantly against funding Democratic proposals for increased domestic spending to help people and defend us against the climate emergency. So they are blocking passage of the 2022 appropriations bills that should have been enacted last year.
Since the 2022 appropriation bills are blocked in the Senate, the government continues to be funded by short-term Continuing Resolutions (CR), which essentially allow each department and agency to spend money according to the limits and provisions of the last appropriation bill that was enacted. Which means that ever since Biden was inaugurated, the federal government has been operating on, and restricted to, the limits and provisions of appropriation bills passed during the last year of the Trump regime. Republicans are fine with this, since it means that no new climate-change, economic-justice, healthcare, or other desperately needed programs can be started up or expanded.
Historically, Republicans have used the threat of a government shutdown to blackmail Democrats into including “poison pills” in CRs like the Hyde Amendment, which Republicans could never pass through the normal congressional process. Since two government functions that Republicans do care about (defense and police) never shut down no matter what, they are willing to shut the rest of the government down to get their way. The question is, will Democrats surrender to Republican blackmail?
Democratic leaders are negotiating in secret with Republican leaders to create one or more combined “omnibus” appropriation bills that at least ten Republicans will agree not to filibuster so they can be enacted. Democrats say they are “optimistic,” but Republicans take a more dour view. The truth is, no one outside the closed doors knows what’s really going on.
For the most part, Republicans are happy with this state of affairs because ever since the Reagan era, they have viewed government as "the problem, not the solution." But there are three areas of government they do care about: defense, policing, and agricultural subsidies. Which means that there are a handful of bills each year that for them are "must pass." Among them are the Sacred Six:
Defense Authorization (NDAA) every year. Already passed with strong Dem support.
Homeland Security Authorization, every five years. Comes up again in 2024.
Agriculture Authorization ("Farm Bill") every five years. Comes up again in 2023.
Defense Appropriations—awaiting passage now
Homeland Security Appropriations—awaiting passage now
Agriculture Appropriations—awaiting passage now
If Republicans can pass the three appropriation bills they care about, there's no incentive for them to pass any of the others. So they (and corporate Democrats) may try to separate out and pass those three bills as stand-alones or as a defense-homeland-agriculture omnibus bill. This is similar to the way they pulled out the corporate-friendly infrastructure provisions from Biden's original economic proposals to pass as a “bipartisan” bill and then blocked the rest of the agenda, including climate-defense, healthcare, restoration of tax cuts, child credits, and so on. If the Democratic leadership allows that, they surrender their only leverage to force Republicans to the negotiating table on the remaining appropriation bills.
References
House passes stopgap bill to prevent shutdown, The Hill, 2/8/22
Short-term government funding bill introduced, The Hill, 2/7/22
Stopgap funding bill introduced to buy more negotiating time, Roll Call, 2/7/22
House to take up stop-gap funding bill to avoid government shutdown, The Hill 2/6/22
The Congressional Appropriations Process: An Introduction, Congressional Research Service (CRS)