Shorter Reps: “Waaaah, Our Constituents Have Demands, WTF???”
The US Senate responds to constituent phone calls
Slinkerwink gets a front pager at Firedoglake:
We need to find out these 40 progressive Democrats in the House, and make them the power players in asking them to vote against any bill that comes out of the Senate, which would be Max Baucus’s precious little Finance Bill, that doesn’t include a strong public option. It’s what the Public Option Tool is all about, and Jane Hamsher’s right in her post at FireDogLake about what it means. The truth is that we can’t wait to fix a crappy bill in the conference committee.
There are too many unknowns in play, and I can’t go along with the optimistic take by Ezra Klein about the conference committee being where magically any subpar bill from the Senate can be magically fixed in the conference committee. We can’t afford for the Tri-Caucus health reform package to be weakened any further, or to have the public option stripped out in conference committee. It’d be a mandated bailout of the private insurance industry, and no amount of flowery rhetoric about cost controls and lowered premiums can change that fact.
It’s why I want you to use the Public Option Tool next week to call your progressive Members of Congress and find out where they stand. The public option is the line in the sand for me, and it needs to be the line in the sand for 40 progressive Democrats as well!
Also, want to bring some serious local grassroots smackdown on Senators like Baucus, Wyden, Conrad, Lincoln , Landrieu, Hagan, and Feinstein? Let me tell you how we can do this. We’re going to use President Obama’s website, Organizing For America, to accomplish the greatest smackdown of all time this weekend. …
Here’s the list of states that we should call that presently have Senators that are threatening to block President Obama’s health reform, which includes a strong competitive public option to keep insurers honest. So, when you use the “Contact People Near You” phonebanking tool on OFA and use the generic talking points which I provided, I want you to choose one of these states to call and to have the phone number of the Senator ready on hand to give to the local person you’re talking to when you ask that person to call his or her Senator to support the public option in President Obama’s health reform bill.
California–Senator Dianne Feinstein (202) 224-3841
Louisiana–Senator Mary Landrieu (202) 224-5824
Montana–Senator Max Baucus (202) 224-2651
Nebraska–Senator Ben Nelson (202) 224-6551
North Carolina–Senator Kay Hagan (202) 224-6342
North Dakota–Senator Kent Conrad (202) 224-2043
Oregon–Senator Ron Wyden (202) 224-5244
Go read the rest.
Why is this important? because a bunch of crybaby senators and congresscritters have forgotten who they represent, and they’re throwing a tantrum that progressives are holding them to their promises:
When they complain about our efforts, you know our efforts are working because they’re getting attention in the local districts of these elected officials. And elected officials HATE nothing more than local attention on what they’re NOT doing for their constituents in Congress, and the amount of money they’re taking in to obstruct REAL health reform!
Here’s some more of that whining from these politicians to go with your cheese on toast this morning:
One Democratic strategist who is working full-time on health reform was apoplectic over what he called wasted time, energy and resources by the organizations. The strategist, who asked for anonymity because he was criticizing colleagues, said: “These are friends of ours. I would much rather see a quiet call placed by [Obama chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel saying this isn’t helpful. Instead, we try to decimate them?”
….. Wyden is sanguine about ads in his home state intended to pressure him to embrace a liberal bill.
“I get an election certificate from the people of Oregon,” said Wyden, whose bipartisan health bill picked up its 14th co-sponsor last week. “As far as these ads are concerned, I pay them no attention.”
Trust me, Wyden’s paying attention. And he’ll pay even more attention when we lay down the grassroots smackdown on politicians like him, Snowe, Baucus, Conrad, Landrieu, Hagan, and others who refuse to support what a bipartisan majority of Americans support–a strong public option to keep private insurers honest and make health coverage affordable.
These Senators need to know that their electoral chances rest upon passing REAL health reform with a strong public option, and that we have a very long memory as progressives when it comes to re-election and they swoop back here on Dailykos, ask us to act as ATMs for them, and go campaigning for them. They just might not get that from us at all.
Why does this matter? Because even John Tierney’s right-wing Inquirer recognizes that Universal health care could boost economy:
Imagine living in a society where reliable police and fire protection were available only to those who worked for the largest employers. In this fictional country, people with enough money might be able to buy personal protection – but perhaps not if they’d suffered a burglary five years ago, or once called 911 for a kitchen fire.
Would people with good ideas and a little bit of money be willing to give up personal security for the chance to start their own businesses? Or would they cling to the safety promised by a job at a big company or institution?
Substitute health insurance for police and fire protection, and you have one of the best – and least-heralded – arguments for universal health care, according to a small but growing number of economists….
some say those pushing for universal access to coverage, including the Obama administration, are overlooking an argument with potentially strong bipartisan appeal.
“I think the administration makes a mistake by not making this argument, because I think it would dramatically enhance their appeal to the entrepreneurial and small-business community,” Litan said. “Every small-business owner knows about this problem.”…
Concern that employer-based health care discourages entrepreneurial risk has been around at least since the 1990s, when U.S. politicians last considered revamping the health insurance system. But hard evidence has been limited and conflicting.
One 1996 study, cowritten by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, later a top economic adviser to President George W. Bush and presidential candidate John McCain, found no statistically significant evidence that the employer-based system was impeding entrepreneurship.
At least two more recent studies have reached different conclusions. One as-yet-unpublished study, cowritten by Rand Corp. economist Susan Gates, calls the phenomenon “entrepreneurship lock.”
Gates said in an interview that solving entrepreneurship lock could spur the U.S. economy enough to at least partly pay for the costs of subsidizing universal coverage. But she said it was impossible to predict the overall effect, in part because it was unclear whether the additional entrepreneurs would be better or worse than those already willing to take such leaps.
Gates said today’s system might be discouraging the people best-suited to running businesses – prudent, thoughtful risk-takers – in favor of those convinced “they’re never going to get sick and have to worry about their health.”
Again, go read the rest.
Again, why does this matter? Well, earlier this month, Philadelphia’s reliable progressive anti-war representative, Chaka Fattah, voted not only to continue funding the war in Afghanistan with a George-Bush-style supplemental, he also voted to to give a hundrend billion dollar loan to the IMF to bail out European banks (after signing a letter complaining about the same) (go read the rest, it’ll make my editor happy!). After a flip-flop like that, and with no language on his website one way or the other about single payer health care, who’s ready to just trust him (or anyone in Congress) again?
Not this guy. Please call Congress and the Senate today and tell them your vote hinges on real health care reform, with a public option available from day one, accountable to Congress and the voters. You especially want to call Kay Hagan ((202) 224-6342 ) and Max Baucus ((202) 224-2651) in the Senate, and put the screws to Fattah ((202-225-4001) in the House as well. When you call hagan, give a Raleigh zip code; with Baucus, a Montana zip code. Use mcDonald’s restaurant locator tool to find the appropriate zip code, or they won’t pass your message along (when dealing with liars, you’re entitled to lie right back).
Don’t let the sounds of crying and wailing turn you away. Like the babies they are our representatives have been sucking at the public teat for generations, at your expense. Remember: 75% of THEIR Cadillac health care plans are paid for with YOUR tax dollars. But when it comes to using your taxes to give YOU and YOUR FAMILY something good (instead of the same-old war and destruction) it’s suddenly “too expensive”, “too far too fast”, and “too controversial”.
I call bullshit on the crybaby act, and hope you do too.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
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