Congress Must Pass a Clean Budget With No Poison Pills or Legacy Riders
Every year, Congress must pass a series of budget and spending bills to fund the services and safeguards that protect our families and communities. In recent years, lawmakers have threatened to attach harmful policy riders to this legislation that would weaken, repeal or block essential public protections. Most of these measures are special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists that have nothing to do with funding our government and could not become law on their own merits. In past years, some of them managed to sneak through and are then held over from previous budget cycles as “legacy riders.” More than 265 organizations have joined together to form the Clean Budget Coalition in opposition to these measures. We’re calling on lawmakers to pass clean spending bills ahead of the September 30 funding deadline.
Clean Budget News & Resources (FY 2021)
The Clean Budget Coalition, an alliance of labor, scientific, consumer, research, good government, faith, civil rights, community, health, environmental, and public interest groups, writes you to urge FY21 appropriations bills that are free from policy riders that harm the public. No appropriations titles, package of bills, or continuing resolutions (should that be deemed the appropriate path to continue funding the government), should move forward if they contain poison pill policy riders that go against the public interest. Unfortunately, such poison pill riders have existed as favors to corporate and special interests in previous appropriations cycles and therefore a set of “legacy poison pills,” must be removed from the FY21 appropriations bills. We ask that you take that stance as Congress processes the FY21 appropriations bills—keeping out new policy riders that would harm the public as well as removing those that have become embedded.