Republicans control both chambers of Congress and can bring these types of partisan, ideological proposals to the floor separately whenever they choose. Holding the government hostage to riders like these is not just wrong — it’s an admission that these proposals are outside the mainstream and lack the support to pass on their own merits.

Second, any funding increase for the Pentagon must be matched with at least a dollar-for-dollar increase on the side of domestic priorities, including domestic antiterror programs.

Discretionary federal spending is split about evenly between the Pentagon and virtually everything else. Splitting one dollar among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and every other domestic program — like jobs, education and cancer research — in return for every dollar consumed by the Pentagon alone is more than fair.

The good news is that there is bipartisan support for ending the cuts known as the sequester, the arbitrary across-the-board spending cuts that were enacted after the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011. In June, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, urged congressional leaders “to come together and repeal sequestration.” Representative John A. Boehner, the speaker of the House, once compared the sequester to “taking a meat ax to our government.” I agree.

In their budget, Republicans proposed ending the sequester and borrowing $38 billion for the Pentagon, but provided not a single extra penny to meet our domestic needs.

We are open to Republicans’ ideas on how to pay for the additional funding, but middle-class Americans should not have to pay a dime more. Our tax code remains skewed to benefit multimillionaires and big corporations, so there are ample savings available to restore cuts to both the Pentagon and domestic budgets if we simply close loopholes and ask the superrich to pay their fair share.

When Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner, was asked how much he pays in taxes, he boasted, “I fight like hell to pay as little as possible.” That illustrates one of the major reasons the rich keep getting richer while the middle class struggles: Our tax code gives billionaires like Mr. Trump ways to dodge paying their fair share and shift the burden to the middle class. Democrats believe that hard-working, middle-class Americans should pay less tax than the Donald Trump class, not the other way around.

These are Democrats’ principles. Most Americans agree with them. It is time for Republicans to come to the table, forge a fair budget deal and spare the American people yet another unnecessary, manufactured crisis.