Indivisibles,
Last night, Kevin McCarthy announced that he struck a ‘deal’ with President Biden to avert a default.
A deal? Hold up a minute.
Kevin McCarthy and the MAGA faction that controls the House GOP held the global economy hostage and were ready to plunge the US into a job-killing, retirement plan-erasing, once-in-a-generation recession unless their demands were met.
That’s not negotiating a deal. That’s extracting a ransom.
The ransom was not as large as some feared. Thanks to the hard work of Indivisibles and so many others over the past few months, Social Security and Medicare are untouched. But we're still looking at a bill that cuts everything from education to public health to housing assistance, weakens the IRS’s ability to go after wealthy tax cheats, and creates new requirements that’ll kick poor people off SNAP. And during an inflationary period, these cuts will all be felt more deeply.
We find ourselves in this f’d-up situation for one reason: The GOP has a slim majority, and every single Republican went along with the hostage-taking scheme.
Well, we’ve got a plan to end their majority. And we’re about to kick it into high gear.
When we say every Republican in the House backed this scheme, we’re not just talking about the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Matt Gaetzes. The 18 Republicans serving in Biden-won districts were all accomplices.
Each had an offramp. Any of them could have declared that it wasn’t in the interest of their constituents to put the US on the brink of economic catastrophe in order to extract some giveaways for the rich and cut funding for the poor. If only five of them had done so, joining Dems in backing a clean bill to lift the debt ceiling, all this brinksmanship could have been avoided.
But instead, they did what they’ve done since they got to Congress. They sided with the most extreme members of their party instead of the voters who put them in office. There’s a reason we call them the Unrepresentatives.
While McCarthy continues to rely on these 18 members as he tries to get this ransom passed in the House (no, it’s by no means guaranteed that he has the votes), we’re going to be on the ground in their districts, making sure their voters know they are hostage-takers who sold them out.
What does that look like? Demonstrations. Billboards. Birddogging to get the members on the record (and on video) defending their threats to tank the global economy. Grants to our local groups in all 18 districts to ensure that everywhere these members turn, there are activists calling them out for their extortion.
We already have the Unrepresentatives Campaign infrastructure in place to get to work right away. We have the tools, the expertise, the savvy groups ready to take this fight to the next level. Now we just need to get them the resources to do it.
If you can, please consider a monthly donation to help fund this accountability work all the way up to November 2024. Or, make a one-time gift to help us ratchet up this fight right now.
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Want to do even more to expose these 18 members? Good. We’re going to be holding textbanks where you can directly inform voters about what their member has been doing in office – and how they can organize locally to prevent them from occupying that office again. Sign up here and we’ll give send you shift info as soon as we get the details nailed down >>
This wasn’t the outcome we wanted. And while McCarthy’s weakness as Speaker means it’s too soon to say for certain whether this is the end of the default fight, one thing is absolutely clear: The Republican Party is fully in the grips of extremists willing to burn our democracy and our economy to the ground to get their way.
Our only choice is to defeat them.
In solidarity,
Indivisible Team  |
