First a huge thank you to Joan McCarter and Meteor Blades for repeatedly writing about aspects of this year’s FY 2024 appropriations battles, with a particular (but not exclusive focus) on the GOP attacks on environmental and clean energy programs and the billions of dollars aimed at fighting climate change through laws such as in the Inflation Reduction Act.
But I think a couple of points are worth reiterating, over and over again, in our messaging as well as ideally, that coming from our Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.
1. With their joke of a budget, House Republicans have increased the likelihood of a government shutdown exponentially. In doing so, House Republicans reneged on the debt ceiling deal. The deal that passed, and was signed off by, the GOP-controlled House. And so, the mantra of many members — “my word is my bond” — well, the word of Republicans doesn't mean jackshit.
Accordingly, if a shutdown does occur, there will be only one party to blame — the party. whose word isn’t worth the toilet paper it is written on and which breaks its agreements without a care in the world. That messaging — Republicans and Republicans alone are uinequivocally to blame for any shutdown to come — needs to to repeated early and often, starting now. By all congressional Democrats and the White House. And should be promoted — accurately — on the MSNBC prime time shows.
2. The second point is related to the first. The reason why a government shutdown has become much more likely is directly linked to the nature of that budget and specifically, the appropriations that Republicans are passing for each federal agency. It really can’t be overstated just how extreme their proposed cuts are— on all fronts and basically for all federal agencies apart from the Department of Defense. Historically extreme. Again, Joan and Metro Blades have highlighted some of these in earlier posts but here’s just a few examples:
- The rabid GOP extremists who support sedition want to slash funding for EPA by a whopping 39%, which would bring funding for the agency which responsible for protecting our environment to its lowest funding level since 1991. A couple of my environmental advocacy colleagues have described the EPA funding bill — the Interior Appropriations bill --as possibly the worst appropriations bill they have ever seen.
But that bill is far, far from being alone.
- Take the Transportation and Housing Funding bill. That would slash infrastructure and housing investments by over 28%. It’s opposed by a wide range of groups, including AMTRAK, the American Public Transportation Association, the High Speed Rail Alliance, The Rail Passengers Association, etc. Specifically it would chop 64% from Amtrak’s FY 23 appropriation and would force AMTRAK to immediately reduce repair work needed to operate our network reliably and force deep cuts in service across the country, including the heavily traveled NE corridor. Because sure…. in thewake of catastrophes like the Palestine, Ohio rail derailment that makes sense.
- The NationalPark Service would see its budget slashed by nearly 13%, which would result in the loss of more than 1,000 Park staff jobs.
- Public health. Education. Labor. Environmental Justice. Job Training. Law enforcment. On and on and on.
If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to go the news page of House Appropriations Committee Democrats, which can be found here. I then urge you to click on the press release or releases on the issue area(s) that you’re most passionate about — the releases do a good job of highlighting some — just some — of the most egregious cuts, and elaborating on ahwt those cuts actually will mean for human beings. And lives. And our environment. And public health. The scope and scale of these proposed cuts really is staggering, made by remarkably hypocritical nihilists.
Again. Democrats should be highlighting these proposed cuts every single day….. over and over again …. and what they actually mean to people. Every single interview. This is what the Republican Party is fighting for — job losses, regression on fighting climate change, 19th and 20th century transportation and energy choices, etc. etc;
But that’s not all. The cuts, of course, are also accompanied by more than 100 controversial, “poison pill” policy “riders” which Republicans have crammed in to continue attacking reproductive rights, the environment, etc etc. etc. A small sampling of those riders includes:
- a number of attacks on specific endangered species;
- The Fetal Tissue Rider would prohibit the National Institutes of Health from using fetal tissue obtained from an elective abortion in medical research.
- The Planned Parenthood Rider would prevent the health care provider from participating in health programs funded through the annual Labor-HHS bill. Planned Parenthood plays a critical role in providing quality health care to more than two million people each year. “Defunding” Planned Parenthood means blocking people from accessing critical preventive services like STI testing, breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception, and sex education at Planned Parenthood health centers.
- The Title X Rider would eliminate funding for and further undermine the Title X family planning program.
- The Teen Pregnancy Rider would eliminate funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, while funding abstinence-only programs.
- The Weldon Expansion Rider would prohibit Medicaid from covering abortion, expanding the harmful Weldon Amendment.
- The Abortion Location Rider would prohibit funding for any “abortion hotline” or website run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that provides information on where to obtain an abortion.
- The Post-Dobbs Rider would stop implementation of various Biden administration executive orders intended to increase access to abortion care for people impacted by state bans in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision.
- The Abortion Referral Rider would disallow HHS from requiring any grantee to refer for abortions or to act in contravention of any state law restricting referral for or performance of abortions.
- The LGBTQ Discrimination Rider would prohibit implementation of the Biden administration’s executive order on gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination, which prevents and combats discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation, and fully enforces Title VII and other laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.
- The Gender Affirming Care Rider would prohibit funds for surgical procedures or hormone therapies for the purposes of gender affirming care.
You can find a comprehensive tally of the riders here.
The good news, of course is this budget — this collection of appropriations bills is DOA in the Senate — it will go absolutely nowhere. And the spineless, worthless coward that is the current Speaker of the House — and his leadership team of fellow, seditious Trump enablers — knows this perfectly well. It will have to be reconciled with the Senate appropriations bills which I suspect will be adhering to the debt ceiling deal. Most likely, reconciled bills will eventually pass with the help of Democratic votes in the House over the anguished howls and screeches of the seditious, treasonous, extremist members of the GOP.— bills which will be much, much closer to the Senate versions to the rabid right-wing wishlist bills. But any compromise if it occurs — any cuts from the Senate version (even if they are far from an even splitting the difference) — would reward the folks who reneged on the deal and whose word clearly doesn’t mean shit.
Still, before we get to that point, the rabid extremists controlling the GOP might very well shut the government down because they have made it abundantly clear that they won’t settle for anything less than these historically extreme cuts — and they have the numbers to block a GOP budget if they so choose. And because they actually believe that undermining the government would be a good thing.
They’re wrong. Really, really wrong.
They need to be held accountable for this. For all of it,. And that accountability starts with making sure that as many people as know as possible who is blame for a government shutdown, why that’s the case, and just how radically extreme these people are through their vicious, staggering budget cuts and what those cuts actually mean in real life terms. Ad after ad, interview after interview, town hall after town hall.
Make it happen.
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