Congress Must Pass a Clean Budget With No Legacy Riders or New Poison Pills
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.” Dozens of 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, 2022 funding deadline.
Clean Budget News & Resources (FY 2023)
House negotiators have advanced spending bills worth more than $1 trillion for the coming fiscal year as the chamber’s leadership seeks to put a bow on its messy appropriations work. Democrats revived their long-shot battle to do away with a decades-old amendment that prevents federal funds from being spent on most abortion services. The party omitted the provision, also known as the Hyde amendment, from its fiscal 2023 Labor-HHS funding bill earlier this year. They also left off another longtime abortion rider known as the Weldon amendment, which prevents federal funding from going to entities that subject to “discrimination” any health insurance plans, health care centers or health care professionals who refuse to “provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.”