Friday, January 22, 2010

One Roll Call




It's time for action - as Kevin Drum, Steven Benen and our good friends at Balloon Juice have been saying, it's time to get to work.

The only sensible option we have is for the House to pass the Senate version of the Health Care Reform bill and fix the flaws later through a separate reconciliation bill.

But we have to do our part - the House is full of feckless morons, most of whom are running about like chickens with their empty little haids cut off. Help them out - call them and tell them to PASS. THE. BILL.

One roll call and it's on Obama's desk.

Balloon Juice lays it out for you:

Phone your Representative. It feels better than yelling at pseudonyms on an internetblog.

Here is how you do it.

(1) Use a phone. Email has nigh on zero impact. Trust me on this. Letter mail gets read, but you don’t have time. Reach the House switchboard at (202) 224-3121 .

(2) Remember, this person works for you. You pay his or her salary and you voted for them. You’re the boss here, or at least one of them, and it’s they who should worry about what you think of them.

(3) Identify your name and the town or neighborhood where you live zip code. If you are not a constituent don’t bother. Since you guys never listen to me, at least google a zip code in the appropriate district before you call.

(4) State the issue. This is easy: pass the Senate bill or the party gets it. We can (and certainly will) fix the shortcomings later.

(5) How strongly do you feel? Don’t apologize about feeling passionate or pissed off. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

(6) What are you going to do about it? (Updated from earlier) This part is not that relevant when they’re getting a ton of calls. Every teabagger threatens the end of the world, so they get pretty jaded about it.

One last, important point. We want to track where Representatives are swinging on this and who is willing to commit. However your Rep’s intern responds about the Senate bill, please email me or post it in the comments. We are most interested to know who is voting yes, who will vote no, who will not commit and whether the abortion language is a problem with conservative Dems.


To borrow my favorite phrase from Aliens, let's "take off and nuke the GOP's 'kill the bill' strategy from orbit."

It's the only way to be sure.