Another Tug-of-War Over Poor People’s Needs

To keep the government open, Congress needs to approve an appropriations bill before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Congressional Republicans are likely to move forward with a continuing resolution that ignores Democratic priorities. But they need 60 votes in the Senate, and Senate Democrats will this time insist on concessions from Republicans.

To complicate matters further, President Trump has sent over a package of rescissions that would cut an additional $5 billion from international aid. Congress needs to vote that down by the end of the fiscal year to keep the cuts from going into effect—adding to the hundreds of billions of dollars of legally appropriated funding that Trump has held up, mostly on his own say-so.

It seems likely that we will suffer a government shutdown or two before the current confrontation is resolved.

The Circle of Protection released a letter to Congress Monday. Grounded in biblical teaching about the priority of people we need, we urged Congress to protect and perhaps increase funding for poor and low-income people. We also urged them to push back against Trump’s determination to override appropriations decisions that have been negotiated in Congress and passed into law. You will find the Circle of Protection's letter here.

The Circle coalition of church leaders chose to address the current confrontation at the level of basic principles, leaving it to our political leaders to negotiate the many specific aspects of this complicated confrontation.

But speaking for myself, I’m encouraged that the Democratic leaders of Congress (Schumer and Jeffries) announced this week that they will focus on a fix for a looming health-care provision of the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Without this fix, millions of low-wage and part-time workers will face drastically higher health care premiums in January. Four million more Americans are likely to end up without health insurance. Schumer and Jeffries are saying that they won’t deliver the Democratic votes that Republicans need to keep the government open without a fix for this problem. 

There’s likely to be a short-term continuing resolution at the end of this month, and I’m hoping that the Democrats will push for and win a short-term extension of Trump’s pending rescissions package. That would keep Trump’s disrespect for appropriations law and his attack on foreign aid on the table as Congress negotiates an agreement on a longer-term continuing resolution.