June 29 – Exactly as we predicted, and worse than we’d feared: Last night, just around midnight, fossil fueled fascists in the Senate cleared a key procedural vote, 51-49. Several Republican Senators are still saying they want changes and amendments to the bill (though that’s also what they said yesterday before they voted for the thing), and Senate Democrats are requiring a series of procedural votes, including forcing the entire 1,000 page bill to be read aloud, in order to slow things down. Best guess is that the Senate will clear the reading of the bill and procedural steps late tonight — again, around midnight Eastern time while absolutely nobody is or can be paying attention —setting up a final vote of the bill and passage sometime on Monday.
There were a couple more small changes, and a lot of pork-barrel, dirty, and absolutely nakedly corrupt provisions added in the dead of the night last night. One that’s not so bad, Sen Lee dropped some of his plans to sell off millions of acres of public lands — though the still requires and mandates massive amounts of public lands sales, as well as mandatory drilling for oil, mining for coal, and worse. Other changes included exempting just Alaska, and no other state, from certain work requirements related to federal food and healthcare assistance, so yay for Alaska, I guess. But as we said the whole bill is still absolutely horrible – it will kill American citizens, starve children, destroy the climate, and give the regime a massive secret police force with which to arrest, disappear, and deport any political opponents without due process.
Click here or call (833) 971-2490 and tell your Senators to vote NO and stop this climate and community killing budget bill.*
*Note: Yes we know that because it’s a Sunday, and because they don’t want people to know what they are doing, most Senators offices are closed and some of them are refusing to even accept a voice message. As I’ll explain below, it’s still worth trying to get through because each Senator can make a unique impact in the final stages of this process and that’s what we need them to do. If you want to also send them an email, we have two different tools that still work – Click here to send an email with Sunrise and friends, or here with Bill McKibben’s Sun Day project.
A key last step in the process, which is unique to the Senate, is that before final passage any Senator can introduce an unlimited number of amendments, provided they’re all germane to the bill and pass various parliamentary rules. That makes every Senator uniquely important in this final stage: Any Republican Senator who’s said that they have a problem with cuts to childcare, healthcare, eldercare, or clean energy programs can offer an amendment to fix it. Senate Democrats can rally together and force every Senator to say whether they support building concentration camps, starving children, or giving tax breaks specifically to Elon Musk or polluting fossil fuel companies.
Most of those amendments wont pass, of course. Because, as we’ve said all along — this is a fossil fueled fascist regime. They want to kill people, put them in camps, destroy the climate, disappear their political opponents and dissolve democracy in order to benefit billionaires and big oil. That’s what project 2025 is all about and they’ve never deviated from that dirty, racist, fascist vision board. But so far this bill has only over passed a full Congressional chamber by a single vote. If we can use the Vote-A-Rama process to convince even ONE Republican in the Senate or House to change their mind, it’s worth it and the bill is dead. If we can save even one life, or get one megawatt of renewable energy on the grid, or keep one person from getting abducted by masked agents of the regime – it’s worth it to fight for that amendment. We have to save what we can, and that starts by telling every single Senator that it’s their moral and legal obligation to fight this bill and vote no.
June 28 – Just as we feared and warned, the Senate is trying to sneak their Big Ugly Bill through with a vote in the middle of the night this weekend. IN the last 12 hours they’ve released a brand new, 1,000 page long, draft of the bill that’s packed full of even more fossil fuel polluter handouts as well as special gifts for individual Senators, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. Nobody, least of all the Senators have had a chance to fully review the bill, and as a result nobody knows exactly what this version of the Big Ugly Bill will cost. But it’s certain to be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich and polluting corporations in history.
Here’s a bit more of a recap, and our whole message from July 17 is below in case you need a reminder on what’s changed in the last few weeks. Just before Memorial Day, Trump’s Big Bad Budget bill passed the House but just barely. It squeaked by 215-214, meaning fossil fueled fascists had just one vote to spare.
For the last few weeks that bill has been in the Senate, where we’ve rallied and taken non-violent direct action to stop it or slow it down. Last week we got the Senate’s version of the Big Bad Bill, and it’s even worse than the House version. Experts are calling the cuts to clean energy programs “garbage” and “terrible for America.” The cuts to Medicaid and other healthcare programs that keep Americans alive are even worse than the House version of the bill. The cuts to SNAP and food assistance will literally starve children. And the tax breaks for Big Oil and billionaires are bigger, more luxurious, and dirtier – meaning that the whole thing is expected to add $1 trillion MORE to the deficit (The Senate is estimated at $5 trillion instead of $4 trillion House package). That’s why polls show this tax plan is incredibly unpopular – and the more people learn about it, the more they hate it.
This week, the Senate Parliamentarian has been doing her work, striking down several key parts of the Big Ugly Bill – including a massive sell-off of our public lands, big cuts to food assistance, and more. But the fossil fueled fascists in the Senate found a way to put the bill back together again that gets around the Parliamentarian’s objections, and last night released an updated version, which they’re trying to ram through a vote today. To buy the allegiance of reluctant Republican Senators, they’ve added ridiculously corrupt provisions like benefits for whaling captains to buy off Sen Lisa Murkowski. The bill is changing hour to hour, so we can’t tell you exactly what’s in it, but it’s still bad for clean energy, bad for Americans who need healthcare, food, or simply not to be disappeared by Trump’s secret police.
There’s no way for any Senator, regardless of party or political favor, should vote for this bill. Click here or call (833) 971-2490 and tell your Senators to vote no on the fossil fueled fascist budget.
June 17 – A few weeks ago we told you how Trump’s Big Bad Budget bill passed the House but just barely. It squeaked by 215-214, meaning fossil fueled fascists had just one vote to spare. For the last few weeks that bill has been in the Senate, where we’ve rallied and taken non-violent direct action to stop it or slow it down.
Well, last night we got the last of the Senate’s version of the Big Bad Bill, and it’s even worse. Experts are calling the cuts to clean energy programs “garbage” and “terrible for America.” The cuts to Medicaid and other healthcare programs that keep Americans alive are even worse than the House version of the bill. The cuts to SNAP and food assistance will literally starve children. And the tax breaks for Big Oil and billionaires are bigger, more luxurious, and dirtier – meaning that the whole thing is expected to add $1 trillion MORE to the deficit (The Senate is estimated at $5 trillion instead of $4 trillion House package).
That’s why polls show this tax plan is incredibly unpopular – and the more people learn about it, the more they hate it. And that gives us an opportunity to say “No Deal for big oil billionaires.” Click here to take action with us
Trump and his fossil fueled fascist lackey in the Senate, John Thune, are trying to rush this bill to completion before the Fourth of July holiday. The bill guts vital services like healthcare, eldercare, childcare, and climate action to pay for tax breaks and handouts to billionaires and polluting corporations. Not content to destroy our climate and care, the bill also threatens immigrants and anyone the regime dislikes with deportation, expands the US War machine and militarized policing, and targets non-profits and community groups for extermination.
As a result, a lot of Senators are still not on board with this bill. And they’ve made a lot of changes (for the worse) since the bill passed the House. Each one of those changes has to be reviewed and negotiated with House law makers, creating more delay and giving us more chances to tell people how bad and dangerous it is — remember the more people know about the bill, the more they dislike it — and more chances to block the Big Bad Bill.
So we’ve teamed up with our allies at Sunrise to build a powerful tool that lets you send an email straight to the Seante with specific numbers on exactly how this bill would hurt your state. Here’s some of what gets merged in to each email to a Senator:
- How many of your hardworking neighbors will lose their jobs;
- How much more pollution will your kids be exposed to; And
- How much this bill tanks the economy in your state.
If your senator is considering voting yes, this makes it crystal clear: they will be responsible for every child who gets asthma from increased pollution. For every parent who can’t afford groceries. For every hard-working person in their state who loses their job.
Send your email now. Let your senator know: if they vote for this bill, they are responsible for the lost jobs, the sick kids, the families who can’t afford food. Every message counts. Senators track what they hear from their constituents. Make sure your Senators knows exactly what their constituents are demanding, and what it will cost if they choose wrong. Click here to Tell Your Senator: No Cuts For Big Oil Handouts
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No cuts for big oil handouts
No cuts for big oil handouts.
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