Perlmutter greets congressional website visitors with message about DACA, health care funding

U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter says he’ll be greeting visitors to his congressional website with a message of support for young immigrants and federal heath care programs until Congress tackles the issues with permanent fixes.

“I support Dreamers, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and community health centers,” reads white text on a black pop-up graphic that has appeared on the Arvada Democrat’s site since Wednesday.

Congress adjourned for the year Thursday after approving temporary funding through March for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, but without taking up proposals to protect immigrants brought to the United States when they were minors, sometimes known as Dreamers.

President Donald Trump in September rescinded the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has given legal status to nearly 800,000 Dreamers, setting it to expire entirely in early March. Democrats and some Republicans had pressured GOP leadership to consider legislative proposals to reinstate the protection for DACA recipients before leaving town for the holidays.

“I am disgusted once again to see the GOP leave town kicking the can down the road without completing any of Congress’ important work,” Perlmutter said in a statement Thursday after Congress passed a temporary spending measure funding the federal government through mid-January.

“The long-time bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program needs a long-term reauthorization, Community Health Centers need funding certainty, Dreamers need protection from deportation, and we need to do much more. Instead the GOP chose to focus on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and putting as much as $7,100 on the credit card of every man, woman, and child in this country. My hope for 2018 is that my GOP colleagues will agree to work in a bi-partisan way to help the hard working people in the middle, who they left behind in 2017.”

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet did something similar with his Senate website last week, covering the screen with the message: “We stand with Dreamers.”

 

 

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