Only those who are following the ins and outs of the latest round of Washington, DC shenanigans might know that the American federal government is likely to shut down next week as the result of a Republican-led political tactic.

The House of Representatives majority party continually refuses to vote to raise the debt ceiling, a limit on how much debt the American government can incur. The Republican leadership has apparently leaked a document with a laundry list of political demands that it wants in exchange for approving a debt ceiling raise.

Even stranger, among a long list of demands is this curious line: “Blocking Net Neutrality.”

Astute Ars readers likely will already know that killing net neutrality regulation in the United States has been a bee in Republicans’ bonnets for some time now. As recently as this month, Verizon has led the charge to get existing net neutrality laws overturned. When a Federal Communications Commission rule to approve net neutrality laws was issued in 2010, it passed 3-2, with the two Republican commissioners voting against.

The new demand list was first published late Wednesday by the National Review and is attributed to “staff to a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee.”

Ars contacted the offices of the six senior Republicans listed on the committee’s website, asking about the document’s authenticity, but we mostly did not receive an immediate reply.

“We really can’t comment on [the demand list's] authenticity whatsoever because I don’t know where it came from,” Jill Shatzen, a spokesperson for Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), told Ars. “Because of that, I would rather not comment about the specifics of it.”