FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 27, 2021
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Stop Deficit Squawks: “Dangerous Rhetoric Around Debt Puts America At Risk”
Groups Respond as GOP Blocks Government Funding and Suspending the Debt Ceiling
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This evening, Senate Republicans used the filibuster to block a vote to fund the government and suspend the debt ceiling through December 2022. Not a single Republican voted to move the measure forward, setting up a potential government shutdown, and threatening the federal government’s ability to pay its creditors.
Predictably, Republicans say they oppose this very basic congressional function because of concerns about the national debt. Yet they cheered Trump’s tax giveaway to the rich, which ballooned the debt by $2 trillion, and they refuse to support increasing taxes on the rich in order to build infrastructure and invest in working families.
Tax March Board Member Maura Quint made the following statement on behalf of Stop Deficit Squawks:
“This vote shows exactly how deficit squawks’ dangerous rhetoric around the debt puts America at risk. Republicans are always squawking about the same ‘artificial crisis’ around the national debt, and now they’re using it to threaten a real crisis by refusing to pay debts incurred by the Trump administration.
“Deficit squawks claim to be objective government watchdogs, but they give cover to the right-wing extremists who are driving us closer to the brink of a government shutdown and a default. A reckless Republican-forced default would have catastrophic consequences for everyday Americans, and plunge the country into yet another recession, just as workers and families are clawing their way out of the pandemic. Deficit squawks work to protect corporate interests, not the American people.”
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About Stop Deficit Squawks
The campaign to Stop Deficit Squawks is a coalition of more than a dozen progressive advocacy groups pushing back against the false notion that manufactured fears about deficits and debt should take precedence over real investments in jobs, families and infrastructure. Coalition members cover a range of issues in the progressive sphere, but are united in the belief that it’s time to invest in the everyday people who make up our economy – not just big corporations and the wealthy.
The growing coalition’s members include:
Action Center on Race and the Economy
Blue Future
Center for LGBTQ Economic Advancement & Research
Center for Popular Democracy
Demos
ExtendPUA
Friends of the Earth
Groundwork Collaborative
Health Care for America Now
Indivisible
Insight Center for Community Economic Development
Invest in America
Liberation in a Generation
Network Lobby
Patriotic Millionaires
People’s Action
Social Security Works
Strong Economy for All Coalition
Tax March
