Full Event Recording Here
Read the Report on GOP Budget Reconciliation Hypocrisy Here
On a virtual press event this morning, Protect Our Care and the Coronavirus War Room responded to the inadequate COVID relief package proposed by Republican Senators, highlighted the bipartisan popularity of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, and announced the release of a new report outlining the Republican hypocrisy on using budget reconciliation to pass legislation.
While Republican Senators try to slash crucial funding from the relief package, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan has widespread support from voters across the political spectrum. Biden’s plan would offer families badly-needed support with direct stimulus checks, expand unemployment insurance, fund vaccine distribution and nationwide testing, provide money to get kids back in school, offer housing assistance for families trying to keep a roof over their heads, and include state and local aid for communities who need to keep first-responders on the job. The Republican proposal would eliminate or severely cut key parts of it.
These same Senators are crying foul over Democratic lawmakers attempting to overcome their obstruction of President Biden’s crucial proposal through budget reconciliation. However, most of them have supported the same budget reconciliation approach to pass tax cuts for wealthy donors and to attempt to strip millions of Americans of their healthcare.
Therefore, Protect Our Care is releasing a report outlining their budget reconciliation hypocrisy in past public statements and votes. These Republican Senators must answer why budget reconciliation is acceptable to pass tax cuts and strip health care away but not to offer millions of Americans support in making it through the worst public health and economic crises in modern history.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the American Rescue Plan has tremendous support from the American people. It’s a bipartisan solution,” said Leslie Dach, Chair of Protect Our Care. “All of this talk of unity and moving forward together is an unbelievable display of hypocrisy on the part of Republican Senators – who have spent their careers jamming bills through the Congress that would not try and help the American people, but destroy needed social safeguards.”
“We’ve been here before. Today, Protect Our Care and the Coronavirus War Room are releasing a report: A History of Republican Reconciliation Hypocrisy 2001-2021. It’s important to note that even the 10 Republicans that went and met with President Biden last night – many of which are publicly decrying, begging the Democrats, begging the President, not to go the route of reconciliation, while offering really bad faith plans that don’t get the job done for the American people – they have all voted for policies under reconciliation. And almost all of them have spoken out in favor – so not not a quiet support for reconciliation, not underneath the radar. They have gone on the record. They have campaigned in public for the effort to pass bills under reconciliation,” said Brad Woodhouse, Executive Director of Protect Our Care. “We’re supporting President Biden’s plan. We believe the plan offered by the 10 Republicans doesn’t meet the test. And we want to call out this hypocrisy.”
“Here’s the bottom line: the American people want bold action to combat the coronavirus,” said Zac Petkanas, Director of Protect Our Care’s Coronavirus War Room. “They don’t want to go small. They don’t care about arcane congressional procedures or whether something is passed through regular order versus reconciliation. They just want relief and they want results. And that’s what the American Rescue Plan delivers: relief and results.”