Tell the President and your Senators: Funding Defense means Ukraine and Covid
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Call BOTH of your Senators.
Call Script
My name is __________. I am a constituent, and my zip code is _______. I am a member of Indivisible SF.
To President Biden: President Biden, I support your efforts to aid the Ukrainian people in their defense against Russian aggression. I also support Speaker Pelosi's call to combine additional Ukraine aid with the Bipartisan COVID Supplemental Appropriations Act to continue funding our defense against the pandemic and to arm ourselves against the danger of new variants and new plagues forced into human environments by global warming.
Big defense industry donors to the Republican Party are eager for the additional sales that will be generated by more military aid to Ukraine. So Democrats must not repeat the mistake they made when they severed infrastructure projects in the BBB Act from investments in people and the environment. If ever there was a time to stand firm against Republican intransigence and bullying and to seek Republican votes to overcome a filibuster, it is on the issue of combined Ukraine and COVID-19 defense.
To your Senators: I support President Biden's efforts to aid the Ukrainian people in their defense against Russian aggression. I also support Speaker Pelosi's call to combine additional Ukraine aid with the Bipartisan COVID Supplemental Appropriations Act to continue funding our defense against the pandemic and to arm ourselves against the danger of new variants and new plagues forced into human environments by global warming.
Big defense industry donors to the Republican Party are eager for the additional sales that will be generated by more military aid to Ukraine. So don't repeat the mistake of severing infrastructure projects in the BBB Act from investments in people and the environment. If ever there was a time to stand firm against Republican intransigence and bullying and to seek Republican votes to overcome a filibuster, it is on the issue of combined Ukraine and COVID-19 defense.
Background
While Republican officeholders support lavish funding for the military, police, and farm and corporate subsidies, they consistently oppose government action in almost all other spheres — including public health. And for partisan reasons, they are committed to sabotaging any and all achievements by a Democratic administration. So they are opposing $10B (whittled down from $22B) for defense against the COVID-19 pandemic and future outbreaks. They are opposing the Bipartisan COVID Supplemental Appropriations Act even though the proposed extension is fully paid for by shifting unspent money from other programs. Without this additional funding, we will have to pay out of our own pockets for COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and, for those of us who fall ill, treatment. For us, this is another form of inflation.
To appeal to their white nationalist base, Republicans are currently justifying their opposition to supplemental COVID-19 funding to their demand that Biden retain Trump's racist implementation of Title 42 to summarily block and deport immigrants and asylum seekers. Title 42 is an old 1944 law enacted during World War II that empowers federal health officials to block entry into the U.S. of people arriving from a nation where there's an outbreak of some deadly communicable disease such as plague or typhus. In a gross misuse of Title 42, Trump's CDC ordered the Border Police and INS to use the presence of Covid-19 in predominantly nonwhite nations to block and deport immigrants and asylum-seekers from those countries. That order has now been used almost two million times. As Speaker Pelosi pointed out, ending the Title 42 rule simply reinstates the border laws that were in place prior to March 2020. President Biden campaigned on revoking Trump's Title 42 order and has tried to do so, but Republicans got a judge to temporarily keep the order in place. Now Republicans are demanding that the Ukraine-Covid aid bill include language forcing Biden to retain Trump's Title 42 rule. Yet we know that even if the Democrats cave and leave Title 42 in place, Republicans will simply find a new excuse to oppose spending money on public health – just as they have in the past.
While it's rarely mentioned in the media, the bulk of foreign aid and military assistance to other nations is also a subsidy to big US business because most of it is provided as credits that can be used to purchase goods and services provided by American corporations rather than cash. The reality is that while the weapons will go to Ukraine, at least two-thirds of that $33B in money will go to the American military-industrial complex as an unexpected windfall. If anything can ever get ten Republican senators to break a partisan filibuster, it is more money for the defense industry.
Republicans stand for power and self-interest. We believe in helping people in need, getting necessary work done, and preserving that which must be protected. Sometimes that requires accepting unpleasant compromises with the party of greed and selfishness. But if Democrats always forego fighting for the loaf in order to gain a slice, Republicans have no reason ever to compromise. Sometimes you have to stand up to the bullies for the greater good. Democrats need to do more of this, even at some risk, even at the cost of some pain.
References
Pelosi endorses strategy to combine Ukraine, COVID aid, The Hill 4/29
Biden sends Ukraine aid bill, but Democrats divide on strategy, Roll Call 4/26
Vote on COVID-19 spending bill indefinitely delayed, Roll Call 4/6/22
Overview of ($10Bn) Bipartisan COVID Supplemental Appropriations Act
Loss of Pandemic Aid Stresses Hospitals That Treat the Uninsured, NY Times, 5/1/22
Biden Must Keep His Campaign Promise to End Title 42, Public Citizen, 4/28/22
Title 42: The Cruel Trump Policy Continuing Under Biden, Human Rights First. 3/31/21