Saunders: The budget agreement was necessary, but ‘working people don’t like being treated like bargaining chips, and we certainly won’t forget’

AFSCME President Lee Saunders released the following statement after the House approved the bipartisan budget agreement reached between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy:

“Once again, extremists in Congress pushed our economy to the brink. If we had gone over this financial cliff, our government would have defaulted for the first time in American history, causing a deep recession, the loss of countless jobs and devastating cuts to the public services we all rely on. From health care to education to emergency services to sanitation, no sector would have been untouched, and people would have suffered. All so Republican congressional hard-liners could protect their billionaire donors from paying their fair share of taxes. Selfish doesn’t even begin to describe it.

“President Biden, once again, pulled us back from the brink. While protecting Medicaid benefits and retirement savings for millions of Americans, this bipartisan budget agreement also preserves the progress we have made for working families through the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act. And this agreement defends essential public services from devastating cuts, which would have hurt the communities who depend on us most.

“This agreement isn’t perfect. Neither side got everything they wanted. That is the nature of negotiations in a divided Congress. But this deal was absolutely necessary to save our economy, our jobs and our future. We will remember how quick anti-worker politicians were to throw our families and communities under the bus just to serve their extreme ideological agenda. They lost this time, and they will lose at the polls – because working people don’t like being treated like bargaining chips, and we certainly won’t forget.”