John,

Congress has set deadlines for completing 12 bills that provide funding for all the federal programs requiring annual appropriations – including nutrition for babies and toddlers, rental subsidies, environmental protection, child care, education from pre-k to college, mental health services, transportation, and a whole lot more.

If Congress does not finally approve full-year funding or pass another short-term spending bill, some of these essential programs will see their funding run out on March 1st and the rest will run out of funding on March 8th, threatening critical human needs programs until Congress acts.

Just to be clear, these are the same appropriations bills that were supposed to have passed in September 2023. Since then, our government has been funded by a set of short-term spending bills that are holding programs at 2023 funding levels — despite the fact that need has greatly increased. Extremists have repeatedly threatened to hold up these spending bills unless they include deep cuts and harmful policy changes.

Congress has mere days to pass crucial legislation to avert a partial government shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have agreed to topline budget numbers¹; now Congress needs to reject divisive policy riders that don’t belong in funding bills and enact bipartisan legislation to keep government services operating.

One thing is for certain: even though the agreement on total spending is very tight, Congress must pass bills that respond to urgent and growing needs, to avoid turning away families from assistance for food, housing, and heat. Congress must finally reject the demands of extremists who want to prevent full-year bills from passing, because they know such failure will soon trigger automatic cuts that will hit domestic programs hard. Send a direct message to Congress today demanding they pass funding bills at the agreed upon levels and increase funding to WIC and rental vouchers so that no one is turned away.

Instead of working to ensure that our government is fully funded and programs like WIC and housing vouchers get the appropriations they need, a small group of extremists in the House Freedom Caucus have placed a stranglehold on funding bills with far-right ideological “poison pill” riders that do nothing to help or protect vulnerable communities and working families. They want to keep Congress from doing its job, to force automatic, across-the-board cuts, and they don’t seem to mind triggering a government shutdown to get there.

Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell recognizes this is a path to disaster. “We have the means — and just enough time this week — to avoid a shutdown and make serious headway on annual appropriations,” McConnell said, as quoted in CQ. “But as always, the task at hand will require that everyone rows in the same direction: toward clean appropriations and away from poison pills.”² At a meeting at the White House today, Congressional leaders claimed they’d avoid a government shutdown – but we need to keep up the pressure on Congress to do its job.³

More than 560 poison pill riders — policy changes to must-pass appropriation bills that are so divisive and unpopular that they would never pass through Congress as standalone legislation — have been added to appropriations bills in the House.⁴ Many of these riders have nothing to do with funding the government, instead they attack the LGBTQIA community, get rid of climate change protections, propose extreme anti-immigrant policies, limit SNAP food choices, and require the Census Bureau to exclude people from state population counts depending on their immigrant status, unconstitutionally skewing voting representation and fair distribution of federal funds to states.

There were 33,007 fair housing complaints in 2022, the highest number ever in a single year, and it’s estimated that if discrimination were addressed to improve access to housing credit, there would be a gain of 770,000 more Black homeowners.^5,6 BUT, there’s a poison pill rider to bar the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from using funds for the proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, published in January to fulfill the requirements of the Fair Housing Act.

We cannot continue to allow a handful of extremists to place a stranglehold on our government in order to impose their unpopular agenda onto the American people.

Time is of the essence. Send a direct message to Congress today to demand they pass funding bills without the addition of poison pill riders.

Thank you for all you do,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs

¹ Congress agrees on how much to spend — but not on how to spend it
² Critical Spending Decisions Await Tuesday White House Meeting
³ Johnson commits to avoiding shutdown during White House meeting
⁴ Topline Spending Deal Sets Stage for Showdown Over Poison Pill Riders
⁵ 2023 Fair Housing Trends Report
⁶ CLOSING THE RACIAL INEQUALITY GAPS