The organizations represented on this sign-on letter asked President Obama to oppose any FY 2017 appropriations bills which include inappropriate ideological policy riders.
Appropriations bills have been used before to undermine essential safeguards through "policy riders" – provisions that address extraneous policy issues, and are slipped into appropriations bills to win approval as part of must-pass funding legislation. Last year, hundreds of these policy provisions were proposed as a part of the omnibus process, and in this year's budget process some members of Congress have already started to insist on inappropriate riders.