Harmful Policy Riders Threaten to Derail Federal Spending Deal

Capitol BuildingNLIHC has joined the Clean Budget Coalition—a group of more than 100 organizations—to urge Congress and the White House to reject harmful poison-pill policy riders that could prevent lawmakers from enacting a final full-year spending package for FY17, putting vital investments in affordable housing at risk.

If Congress does not approve full-year FY17 spending bills for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Agriculture (USDA) and instead passes a long-term stopgap spending measure known as a continuing resolution (CR), these agencies will experience steep shortfalls in funding. A long-term CR will result in deep cuts to critical housing programs that could cause thousands of families and children to lose access to stable, affordable housing, putting them at increased risk of homelessness.

The letter states, “Budget bills have been used before to undermine essential safeguards through ‘policy riders’ – provisions that address extraneous policy issues and are slipped into funding bills to win approval as part of must-pass funding legislation. We urge Members of Congress to oppose flawed funding proposals that include ideological policy riders and to finish this budget this year. We further urge the administration in the strongest possible terms to oppose any funding bills that have such riders before signing any final FY17 funding package.”

The deadline to sign onto the letter is Friday, October 28.

Sign onto the Clean Budget Coalition letter at: http://bit.ly/2eeJhbw

For more information about the negative impacts of a long-term CR, see: http://bit.ly/2aK61e1