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Overview: During debt ceiling negotiations in May, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and President Biden reached a deal to avoid default. Their agreement included specific spending caps for this year’s budget and required all 12 annual appropriations bills to be signed into law before 2024. However, a handful of MAGA House Republicans are pressuring Speaker McCarthy to break the promises in that deal. Even if it means shutting down the government. The spending cuts these extreme MAGA Republicans want would hurt funding for schools with low-income students, eliminate 430 preschool slots for Iowa kids, raise housing costs and hurt Medicare and Social Security services.
The Headline: MAGA Republican funding cuts would have devastating impacts for hard-working Iowa families
The Message: As Iowans, most of us want to see each other succeed, no matter our background, zip code, or income. But today, Iowa members of Congress are putting wealthy corporate interests and their political power ahead of hard-working Iowans. MAGA Republicans Representatives Nunn, Miller-Meeks, Feenstra and Hinson are allowing their party to push us into a government shutdown unless we let them take away food assistance, weaken Medicare and Social Security and put health provider payments at risk, all while increasing the cost of living and cutting funds for education and clean drinking water. We’ve seen that we can stand up to the money in politics and protect our freedoms, families and futures. If we come together, we can hold MAGA Republicans accountable for putting our futures at risk and demand legislators invest in and protect what’s important to our families.
For more talking points and tangible examples, click here.
The Tweet:
Hey (Rep Name): Stop playing political games with our future! It’s time you focused on a looming shutdown, not your political agenda. Period. #Iowa #StopTheShutDown
Iowa deserves better, but (Rep Name) is willing to sacrifice crucial programs, including affordable housing and Social Security, to protect wealthy corporations and tax cheats. Iowans deserve a lawmaker who will #StopTheShutDown. #Iowa
More Iowa talking points for Iowa-specific threats:
MAGA Republicans in Congress are trying to put wealthy corporations and tax cheats over Iowans, forcing workers to once again pay for the richest one percent of Americans, instead of what we truly owe.
MAGA Republican bills add at least $100 billion to deficits over 10 years by making it easier for the wealthy and big corporations to cheat on their taxes.
House Republicans are also pushing corporate tax giveaways that would cost us over $500 billion if made permanent—including at least $30 billion in retroactive tax breaks for investments wealthy corporations made last year.
MAGA Republicans want to pay for these tax cuts for the richest Americans and wealthy corporations by making deep cuts to education, health, and worker programs.
MAGA Republicans are willing to raise costs for working people and shut down the government so they can hold onto power and benefit their wealthy donors.
The harmful policies MAGA Republicans are pushing and the things they are willing to shut down over will raise costs and hurt working families. Specifically, their demands would:
- Hurt 113,200 students in Iowa and lay off up to 1,300 educators by slashing funding for schools with low-income students by cutting Title One.
- Eliminate preschool slots for 430 kids in Iowa by cutting Head Start funds, undermining education opportunities at a pivotal developmental age. Cutting Head Start also prevents parents from working and accessing the child care they need.
- Increase housing costs for more than 100 Iowa households by cutting Housing Choice Vouchers.
- Force more than half a million Iowa seniors and Iowans with disabilities to endure longer wait times to receive assistance and services they paid into through administrative cuts.
- Increases burdens for doctors and hospitals, especially rural providers, by making it harder to pay them on time, threatening the already limited access to providers who fight tooth and nail to care for Iowans.
- Puts Iowa loved ones in nursing homes at risk by limiting the ability of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversight and inspections by at least 10%.
- Delay help and services to 710,000 Iowans on Social Security and Supplemental Security Income with funding levels this low, field offices could be forced to shorten the hours or days they are open to the public, or in some cases close altogether.
- Block 210,000 Iowa workers—1,400 adults and 800 youth—from job training opportunities and workforce development services through $4 billion in cuts to the Department of Labor.
