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Friend, The Senate just voted to advance a bill taking back $9 billion in funding that had already been appropriated.(1) The bill cancels more than $1.1 billion in funding for public broadcasting -- basically the entire federal budget for hundreds of local NPR and PBS stations for the next two years.(2) It also claws back $1 billion from the United Nations and $2.5 billion for water and agriculture improvement in developing nations.(3) The good news is that the bill barely got out of committee, and JD Vance had to be the tie-breaking vote. We must flood the Senate with phone calls for the next two days to ensure the bill fails entirely. Click here to tell your senators to vote NO on the recissions bill!
Worse than the cuts we know are planned, the bill was pushed forward despite the fact that, as Susan Collins said, “nobody really knows what [other] program reductions are in it.”(4) That’s right -- the Trump administration asked the Senate to vote on a budget reduction without releasing to Senators exactly which programs would be reduced, because the Office of Budget Management is holding that list back. Donald Trump is using these retroactive budget cuts to end programs he disagrees with, like public broadcasting. But the Senate is already suffering a hit to its approval ratings from passing the Trump budget bill, which gives us a golden opportunity to stop Trump from destroying public broadcasting and foreign aid. We already have “no” votes from every Democratic senator and Republicans Sens. Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell. All we need is one more Republican senator to join us and the recission bill is toast. Will you call your senator now and say NO to the recission bill? Thank you for being in the fight! –Irene, along with Annie, Angela, Isidra, Cecilia, Jen, and Lindsay (the Courage team)
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