Tell our Members of Congress and Biden: Stand Fast, Don't Surrender to Shutdown Blackmail
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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.
We strongly support your continued rejection of Republican poison-pill demands in appropriation bills or Continuing Resolutions (CR). Their threat to shut down the government if we do not surrender to extreme demands is a form of political blackmail and hostage taking. Rewarding them with policies and provisions that they cannot enact through the normal legislative process will result in even more blackmail threats.
We understand that immigration and border security are serious, urgent, and complex issues that can only be addressed by a substantive immigration bill enacted through the normal legislative process rather than shut-down blackmail threats. Such an immigration bill must reject the cruel and highly partisan racist and xenophobic demands of the Trump/MAGA extremists.
Background
This is yet another rerun of the Republican blackmail and intimidation strategy. Their goals remain clear:
Reduce taxes on the very rich and the big corporations
Support, subsidize, and expand the fossil fuel industry
Oppose unions, roll back wage increases, and take away public health care and housing
Demonize and scapegoat people of color to energize their white-nationalist base
Further restrict abortion access to gain votes from religious extremists
Suppress and restrict voting by people of color, the poor, and students
Suppress, silence, and eliminate ideas that don’t fit into their extreme right-wing ideology
They know that they cannot enact these and similar anti-people, anti-democratic policies through normal legislation, and they’d never win an election if they honestly campaigned on their true agenda. So they try to ram it through with backroom deals, disinformation, and political blackmail.
On Sunday, House and Senate leaders agreed on "Top Line" numbers. This is a necessary procedural step in the process of enacting the twelve annual appropriation bills (that were supposed to have been enacted by September 30 of last year). The leadership agreement sets total Fiscal Year 2024 spending at $1.66 trillion, of which $886.3 billion is for defense and $772.7 billion is for domestic spending. According to press releases, the deal does not include MAGA poison-pill culture-war provisions. However, the increase of defense over domestic spending represents another victory for conservatives in both parties and further departs from the long-standing policy of equally balancing defense and domestic spending.
Though the leadership deal includes billions in cuts that Democrats opposed, it is roughly in line with the bipartisan Debt Ceiling agreement and Fiscal Responsibility Act from May of last year. So Democrats largely support the Sunday agreement because it rejects draconian cuts to domestic programs that MAGA-Republicans are demanding and because Democrats have so far kept the poison pills out.
For their part, MAGA/Trump extremists fiercely opposed the debt deal last year—they forced McCarthy (D-CA) out of the speakership because he signed it. They are already mobilizing against the Sunday agreement, threatening to shut down the government if their poison pills are not swallowed.
Since appropriation bills that conform to Sunday's agreement require Democratic votes to pass the House and Senate, Democrats have the power to stand fast against any further cuts to domestic spending or inclusion of any MAGA poison pills—if they have the backbone to use that power. We must urge them to stand fast.
References
Shutdown risk grows with GOP’s border fury, The Hill, Jan 4, 2024
4 ways the government funding fight could play out in January, The Hill, Jan. 1, 2024
Untangling the Government Funding Mess, The American Prospect, Jan 3
Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Politically Obtuse Plutocrats, Paul Krugman, NY Times, Jan 4
Congress has a deal to fund the government and not much time to pass it Washington Post, Jan 7
With Shutdown Looming, House and Senate Leaders Agree on Spending Levels, NY Times, Jan 7
Congressional leaders announce topline deal on appropriations, Roll Call, Jan 7
Far Right Balks as Congress Begins Push to Enact Spending Deal, NY Times Jan 9 (no paywall)