The action this week is pressing upon the President and our members of Congress the need for a clean Debt Ceiling Bill.
Republican leaders in both the House and Senate, pushed by a cabal of their most extreme members, declared their intentions to hold the debt ceiling hostage to demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.
This would be a disaster. Failure to increase the debt ceiling would wreck the global economy, producing a recession or even depression, and would weaken America’s standing in the world.
Failure to increase the debt ceiling would not do anything to limit future debt, it would simply force the United States Treasury to default on its existing bonds.
The extremists in Congress are trying to extort changes in policy that they can’t get electorally because by and large the American people don’t support them.
Social Security and Medicare are overwhelmingly popular. So while Republicans have wanted for decades to cut, privatize, or otherwise destroy them, they have never been able to overcome the significant popular backlash to those cuts. That’s why they’ve hidden behind fast-tracked commissions, committees, and processes like the one Mitt Romney proposed in his TRUST Act. They want to cut Social Security behind closed doors, without Republican fingerprints.
President Obama attempted to negotiate with Republicans in order to raise the debt ceiling in 2011. Those negotiations yielded an agreement that prolonged the Great Recession, led to the downgrading of the United States’ credit rating, and nearly resulted in cuts to Social Security and Medicare. America is a democracy―we should not allow government-by-hostage-crisis to become routine.
President Biden and the rest of Congress must make it clear: Raising the debt ceiling is the basic minimum that we expect from Congress. There can be no negotiation over a necessity.
Please sign a letter to President Biden and your members of Congress supporting a clean debt ceiling bill.
Options to Take Action:
- Sign a letter supporting a clean debt ceiling bill at the Action Table on Sunday.
- Download, sign and mail one of these letters: Letter for CA or Letter for Outside CA.
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If you ever need to look up your member of the U.S. House of Representatives or your U.S. Senators check here: www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.
To find contact information for your California State Senator or California State Assemblymember check here: www.senate.ca.gov and www.assembly.ca.gov.
Take Action
Every week at All Saints Church we put our faith into action. The action this week is pressing upon the President and our members of Congress the need for a clean Debt Ceiling Bill.