Senate Dems to GOP: Drop the Riders

Zuma/Louie Palu

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As lawmakers work to negotiate a grand bargain on the federal budget, top Senate Democrats hosted a conference call with reporters to insist that they won’t let social issues derail a deal to keep the government—and the still-nascent economic recovery—going.

The watchword of the day is “rider,” a term used to describe provisions tacked on to government funding bills that restrict how money can be spent. House Republicans wedged plenty of riders into their budget proposal, but some—including provisions to ban funding for Planned Parenthood and restrict the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases—are particularly galling to Democrats, who still control two-thirds of the government.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, also criticized the GOP’s cuts to Title X funding, which supports contraception and other health services for low-income women, and cuts to the Head Start program, which funds education programs for low-income families. “This should be the kind of thing upon which reasonable people can agree—that this is not the right thing to do,” Reid said. “It’s certainly not something over which it’s worth shutting down the government.” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) echoed Reid: “Please don’t let the ship of state crash over riders…. let’s not shut down the government on a fight over some bumper sticker issue that may have been around for the last ten or twenty years.”

Durbin acknowledged that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is stuck been a rock and a hard-charging, aggressive tea party. But Durbin said he also remains confident that the speaker understands the devastating implications of closing down the government. During the last shutdown, over $3 billion of exports sat idle in ports, according to Reid. “We’re calling on speaker Boehner to sit down and in good faith work with us. We’ve agreed on the number,” Durbin said, referring to the $73 billion in spending cuts for the 2011 budget negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden earlier this week. “Now it’s a matter of putting together the cuts that will achieve our goals of reducing spending in a responsible way.” If Boehner can do that, then he’s sure to find friends on the other side of the aisle, Durbin promised.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also weighed in on Boehner’s intra-party dilemma. “We’re on the doorstep of a deal as long as the Speaker resists the tea party Republicans in the House,” he said. Because Boehner has been boxed in by the tea party, Schumer added, the Speaker will need the support of Democrats, and must look to make cuts to mandatory rather than domestic discretionary spending. “We’re going to insist that mandatory savings be part of any deal. Because otherwise the cuts become so deep on certain programs that they cut in the bone.”

Meanwhile, Reid said that the Democrats have found an unlikely ally in their fight to keep the government open: the Republican-leaning US Chamber of Commerce. Reid said that Chamber president Tom Donohue told a gathering of over 100 Republicans yesterday that they would be making a huge mistake shutting down the government. And the Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of major U.S. corporations, warned that a government shutdown would kill the momentum the private sector has gained in recent months.

“You can’t balance this budget… on the backs of people who had nothing to do with the debt,” Reid said. “They had nothing to do with making the debt what it is. And they shouldn’t be the only answer to it.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate