I hadn’t planned to say anything about the fate of health care reform until at least the beginning of next week, as I have the sense that it’s impossible to know where things stand right now. Also, I’m completely exhausted by the whole story.
That said, I’m one of those spineless liberals who believes that the House needs to pass the Senate bill — or else. And if you agree, I think kevin is right: it’s time to call your congressional representative. Which is what I just did a minute ago.
And having just gotten off the phone with Congressman Mike Thompson’s office, I have no idea what to say. The person who initially fielded my call explained that the congressman “doesn’t yet know if he’ll vote for the Senate health care bill.” “Um, really?” I said. “Didn’t the House Democratic caucus meet this morning on this very question?” “Yes, but we’re waiting to hear from leadership about our path forward.” I then asked to speak to the staffer in charge of the congressman’s health care portfolio and got very nearly the same answer. The staffer did, though, explain that the congressman is very eager to hear from constituents on this issue.
Well, okay then. The House switchboard is (202) 224-3121. But you’ll have much better luck if you google your congressional representative and call his or her DC office directly. I urge you to be polite and supportive. It was clear from the staffer’s pained tone that she was more upset about this issue than I am. Anyway, take a few minutes out of your day and make the call. You might feel better afterward.
Seriously, do me a favor — and after all I’ve done for you, why wouldn’t you reciprocate this one time? — and please call your representative. Then convince two of your friends to do the same thing and then to have two more people call their representatives. What do we have to lose? Wait, don’t answer that.
The Edge of the American West 
48 comments
January 21, 2010 at 11:27 am
kevin
Ari’s right — I am right.
Seriously, call your rep. You’ll likely get a non-answer at this stage, but that’s precisely because they don’t know what they’re going to do and are carefully straddling the fence. Let them know which side they should land on.
If you don’t feel like calling, remember that the Tea Party crazies sure as hell are letting their voices be heard.
January 21, 2010 at 11:53 am
Levi Stahl
I hadn’t called my rep, Jan Schakowsky, through this whole process until this morning. I’m about as pragmatic a liberal as you get, and so long as I knew that the compromises being made were getting us closer to passage, I was fine with being silent, since I knew she was a guaranteed vote.
This morning, though, I called and voiced my extreme disappointment, and urged her to do everything she can to insure that the Senate bill passes.
I get the sense (anecdotal, yes), that we’re not alone in this, that they’re getting lots of calls.
January 21, 2010 at 12:01 pm
ari
I get the sense…that they’re getting lots of calls.
That was pretty clear to me as well. My further sense is that the majority of reps don’t know what they’re going to do; they’ll follow the leadership. So it’s a question of whether Pelosi et al. can whip enough no votes into yeses. If they can, I’m betting that the majority will fall into line. Baaaaaa!
January 21, 2010 at 12:02 pm
ari
Also, call a couple of friends, Levi. Or use facebook or whatever it is that you kids use these days to get the word out.
January 21, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Tim
Congresswoman Barbara Lee is also waiting to hear from constituents. That would be UC-Berkeley folks. Her number’s (202)225-2661.
January 21, 2010 at 12:26 pm
ari
Thanks, Tim.
January 21, 2010 at 12:26 pm
jjt
I called Rep. Keith Ellison. The staffer said calls are split between supporting the Senate version and scrapping the whole thing. She said he is likely to support the Senate version, as he thinks that is the only way to get something passed, and there are slightly more calls tending that way.
January 21, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Sandie
Oh, you think Tom Cole is going to listen to me?
January 21, 2010 at 12:39 pm
ari
So call the rep from where you grew up. Or call friends fortunate enough to be represented by people who might listen.
January 21, 2010 at 12:41 pm
kevin
Or all of the above.
January 21, 2010 at 1:18 pm
lt
I called Yvette Clarke’s office in Brooklyn. The staffer said she was meeting about this ‘as we speak’ and would announce her position in a few days.
January 21, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Vance
Pelosi is my representative — I called her Washington office, and understandably was shunted to voicemail.
Who is this “TPM Reader and old friend AK”?
January 21, 2010 at 1:29 pm
ari
Who is this “TPM Reader and old friend AK”?
That dude plagiarized part of my post!
January 21, 2010 at 1:33 pm
AaLD
What if your Representative is a member of the Tea Bag Party, like mine? (Devin Nunes) I could call the Blue Dog Democrat who represents the other side of town (Jim Costa), but would a call from a non-constituent have any weight? (Unaccompanied by a hefty campaign contribution, that is.)
January 21, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Ellen
The fellow answering the phones at Tom Brady’s office (PA) says Brady is definitely voting against the Senate Bill because it isn’t likely to get enough votes to pass. I pointed out the idiocy of that argument, and was told “Yes, it is complicated.” Argh.
January 21, 2010 at 1:39 pm
ari
What if your Representative is a member of the Tea Bag Party, like mine?
It doesn’t hurt to call. But in a case like yours, call two friends who live in districts with Democratic representatives. And have your two friends call two more friends, and next thing you know, we’ll all be in a Breck commercial.
January 21, 2010 at 1:42 pm
ari
The fellow answering the phones
Call back and ask to speak to the person in charge of the health care portfolio for the congressman. Explain that you’re a constituent and an activist who has supported the congressman in the past. Explain that you understand that the Senate has put the House Democratic caucus in a regrettable situation. Then explain that you believe that despite all that, not acting isn’t an acceptable approach to this historic opportunity. Give your name and address, and ask that your message please be conveyed to the congressman. Then call two friends and ask them to do the same thing. Rinse and repeat. Our hair should be lustrous in no time.
January 21, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Texas in Africa
Really. Call. I didn’t learn much as a Hill intern, but I did learn that every single office keeps a tally on constituent calls/emails/letters by topic and position. If one office gets 80% calls in favor of health care reform and 20% against, it is highly likely that the Member will vote accordingly.
January 21, 2010 at 2:29 pm
blueollie
“That said, I’m one of those spineless liberals who believes that the House needs to pass the Senate bill”
Not spineless; it is called “making the best of a bad situation”. Even Paul Krugman (who is hardly milquetoast) agrees.
January 21, 2010 at 2:45 pm
grackle
I called Mike Thompson’s local Humboldt County office asking him to support the Senate version. Very astute office person, hedged that things were not certain, but having been out of the office all day, didn’t quite know the current situation but that Thompson was inclined to support the Senate version when she last spoke with him, yesterday. Took my phone and e-mail address to keep me informed.
January 21, 2010 at 4:00 pm
kevin
What if your Representative is a member of the Tea Bag Party, like mine?
That might not be politically effective, but as someone who was once represented by an ubernut, trust me, it’s nice to put a face (or a voice) on liberalism for the young Republican on the other end of the line and at least speak up inside the right-wing echo chamber.
But yeah, as Ari said, phone a friend in a better district or call a former representative’s office, whatever.
January 21, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Ben Alpers
While you’re at it, call your Senators.
To give the House some credit, unlike the White House and the Senate, which are actively punting, the House is trying to find a way forward.
And in all likelihood, the best way forward will involve the House passing the Senate bill, followed by some cleaning up/compromise via the reconciliation process in the Senate.
But that cannot happen unless the Senate is willing to work with the House. And right now Senate Democrats seems to be taking the President up on his offer to instead take a long nap and “wait for the dust to settle.”
Don’t let your Senators off the hook!
(Incidentally, I’m not calling either of my Senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, or my Congressman, Tom Cole. Commenting on this blog has a more likely chance of affecting the outcome of the HCR fight.)
January 21, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Ben Alpers
Also: call the White House and yell at them for this crap.
In other news, the White House promises to rollback the SCOTUS’s little gift to corporate America through (wait for it)….the legislative process:
We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision.
The sound you hear in the background is the CEOs of the Fortune 500 laughing while pulling out their checkbooks to pay for the spectacular 12-part miniseries about Barack Obama’s early life, from his birth in Kenya to his terrorist training in an Indonesian madrassa, set to air on all major networks simultaneously in September, 2012.
January 21, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Urk
Yeah, I called Dave Loebsack today. since it looks like most of the elected Democrats are spineless and cowardly, we need to make sure that they’re scared of us. Which means lots of calls…
January 21, 2010 at 5:08 pm
ari
I’m not sure how spineless they are. I think instead they’re rudderless, for the moment at least, and I take the person I talked to today at her word: they’re waiting for the leadership to lead. Which is precisely the context in which lots of calls can make a difference. The rank-and-file can help Pelosi et al. chart a course.
January 21, 2010 at 5:09 pm
ari
On second thought, no reason they can’t be both spineless and rudderless. Should they show further signs of being gutless, they’ll have the trifecta.
January 21, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Don
Do any of you know the truth about the real cost of the Senate Health bill? I spoke with a retired worker from one of the Canadian Maritime Provinces, who claimed no one he knew in that province would want to give up their system. That said, the cost is a federal sales tax of 10 percent on all items sold, from food to heating oil, to medicine not covered by the health system. In addition, each province adds a provincial sales tax which ranges from 5 percent to if I recall correctly 11 percent. His province has exempted heating oil, as all of this commodity is imported. They also exempted the first $200 in shoe purchases and some clothing for children. The federal government is trying to get them to remove these exemptions to the sales taxes.
Then, he and his wife pay $4800 for private insurance to cover expenses such as dental, physical therapy, and other medical costs not covered.
What will be the real cost of this proposed system? Before you are tempted to blast me, there was a child living 2 counties south of me who died for lack of dental care. He had an untreated abscess. By the time his mother got him to an emergency room, it was too late, the infection had spread to his brain. Something needs to be done. I still want to know at what real cost.
January 21, 2010 at 6:02 pm
ari
In a perfect world, Don, the real cost would be absorbed by a significant increase of the top marginal tax rate, or maybe the creation of a new top rate for people earning more than x/year, where x = a very big number of dollars.
January 22, 2010 at 3:33 am
rea
Well, there’s not much point in calling my representative (Peter Hoekstra), but I’m with you in spirit.
January 22, 2010 at 4:05 am
ajay
Don: it’ll cost about $87 billion a year. It’ll also cut the deficit by about $13 billion a year. Hope that helps. (Figures from the CBO ten-year analysis).
January 22, 2010 at 5:29 am
oudemia
I called Maloney. Her staffers don’t know her position on the senate bill yet, but we exchanged some gallows humor and I hung up with the impression that the staffer, at least, knew how fucked they all were if the senate bill doesn’t pass.
January 22, 2010 at 6:19 am
Galvinji
(Incidentally, I’m not calling either of my Senators, Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, or my Congressman, Tom Cole. Commenting on this blog has a more likely chance of affecting the outcome of the HCR fight.)
My rep is Jim Gerlach, and calling him would have the same effect. My sense is my senators are on board; Specter has suddenly become reliable because he won’t be re-elected otherwise.
In a perfect world, Don, the real cost would be absorbed by a significant increase of the top marginal tax rate, or maybe the creation of a new top rate for people earning more than x/year, where x = a very big number of dollars.
In a really perfect world, we’d have a robust public option, or single-payer, or something like that. And we’d have ponies. Lots and lots of ponies.
January 22, 2010 at 7:00 am
Brock
Is it actually better to call your rep’s DC office, instead of his or her local office? I called my rep’s local office yesterday, but I’ll call his DC office, too, if that’s actually more effective.
January 22, 2010 at 7:47 am
kevin
Is it actually better to call your rep’s DC office, instead of his or her local office?
Call both. Most offices (both in your district and in the District) just take tallies of people for vs. people against, and pass them on to the legislative staff. There’s no reason you can’t register an opinion with both.
Vote early and vote often, people. Krugman, Hacker and others are now publicly urging the House to pass the Senate bill as it is. It’d help these representatives to know that their constituents agree.
January 22, 2010 at 8:21 am
'stina
My congressperson is a neaderthal republican. But I wrote him. I also wrote the Democrat in the next district over, where several of my family members live. I also wrote the White House. I wrote Nancy Pelosi. And I wrote the Democrats.
January 22, 2010 at 9:10 am
kevin
Writing all those people is nice, but if you want to make an impact, you really need to call.
Emails are worthless, faxes are iffy, letters don’t reach them in time.
Call.
January 22, 2010 at 9:59 am
oudemia
Short form version of comment left on Unfogged: I called Frank Pallone’s office (my mother’s district — I am her political mouthpiece!) and nice staffer boy said that while Frank likes the house bill better, he and others are still figuring out what to do next. I said my piece, staffer agreed, have a nice weekend, bye.
January 22, 2010 at 10:32 am
Erik Lund
Don:
Canada’s Federal Goods and Services Tax, a value-added tax, is currently at 5%, having been reduced in two 1% decrements during the 2000s in response to persistent high Federal budget surplusses from the 7% GST originally introduced by Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government in 1991. The provincial sales tax in some, but not all provinces, has been, or soon will be, “harmonised” with the Federal tax , creating a single value-added tax at a rate of 15% in Nova Scotia in 1997, since reduced to 13.
As with all VATs, the GST is praised by economists, notably Bruce Bartlett, for targetting consumption at the expense of investment. More controversially, the low-income rebates that redress its flat structure provide an administrative framework for a carbon-tax rebate in the province of British Columbia.
It will not have escaped observers that while Canadian tax rates are higher than American in general, Canadian health care costs are significantly lower. This would suggest (even absent any discussion of the way in which health funding is actually arranged in Canada) that the GST is a complete red herring in health care.
But let me dwell for a moment on the observation that Canadian health care costs are lower than American, while health care outcomes are broadly comparable, and that health care sector spending has ceased to grow at a rate greater than inflation in Canada in the last decade. This would appear to suggest that single payer public health care represents by far a sounder and more _conservative_ approach to funding health care than the current American system.
It has moreover been argued that, going forward, one of the best reasons for changing the way that America funds health care is that it will help bring American public expenditures into line with revenues. It is at this point very, very clear that Canadian public finances are in much better shape than American, with the main controversy between the Parliamentary Budget Office and the Finance Ministry being over when Federal budget surplusses will resume.
It was once argued that conservatives do a better job of running the national finances than liberals, that they can set tax rates with discipline and run surplusses in good times. American conservatives since Ronald Reagan have apparently concluded that simple financial discipline is beyond the reach of democratic government. Well, it is not in Canada, and I refuse to believe that this is because of some natural Canadian superiority over Americans.
So perhaps instead of pointing at isolated and mistaken factoids as evidence that Canada is doing it wrong, you could consider the much more hopeful possibility that Canada demonstrates that there is a way of doing it right.
January 22, 2010 at 11:11 am
Seth
Ari, I called my current (and your former) representative, Diana DeGette. Her office says she still hasn’t made up her mind. But I expressed my desire that she commit to passing the Senate version. I did the same in an e-mail to her.
January 22, 2010 at 11:17 am
ari
I called DeGette’s office yesterday. I didn’t misrepresent myself; I explained that I used to be one of her constituents, that I still send her money every year, and that I’d like her to do the right thing. I go the same answer you did. It seems like the House really is waiting to see what happens next. And if that’s the case, if enough people call, it might make a difference.
January 22, 2010 at 2:11 pm
fromlaurelstreet
I called Barney Frank’s office. I didn’t bother to ask what his intention is because I can guarantee it would be the same as Ari got from Thompson’s office — infuriating.
At the phone person’s request, I provided my name and contact information, but told him that I do not want a written response, I want action, I want that HCR bill passed now.
It’s hard to fight against the feeling that all of this is moot, because ten years from now we will now longer have representatives and senators from each state, they will be representatives and senators from Exxon, AIG, BoA, etc.
The people of this country are well and truly screwed.
January 23, 2010 at 3:10 pm
kathy a.
keep calling and writing anyway. even the neanderthals — as someone pointed out, they do keep tallies. OK, maybe the worst offenders don’t, but one can always hope for diligent and/or trained office staff.
fromlaurelstreet — yeah, that feeling of doom sucks. thanks, supreme court! but there are a lot of human rights and political battles that have been won despite sucky circumstances and loud opposition. [there are historians here, look it up!]
this is a time and place where we still have the chance to get millions more people covered for medical care, and eliminate exclusions based on pre-existing conditions. every single bit on top of that is gravy. make those people who represent us do their damned jobs.
you cannot tell me that “the american people” *want* however many tens of millions to be uninsured, or that they personally must become *undeserving* of health care when they most need it. most of us who have lived a certain amount of time on this planet understand that crappy stuff can happen to us and our loved ones.
i’m more interested in progress than purity. so, i would contend, are all of us in our everyday lives. let’s take the example of our children: most of them are not exactly born perfect. we spend days, months, years, decades trying to help them along, and the majority of us do not bolt for the hills at the considerable challenges. diapers, food preferences, and temper tantrums alone are enough to taint the whole project, and i’m not even hinting at the teen years. at some points, we pass them off to teachers on a temporary basis — lots of teachers — and the good teachers encourage them onward instead of shooting them on sight. well, even the worst teachers stop short of firearms, even with the most challenging kids.
so, a person can understand the impulse to feel hostile toward an imperfect bill. but we have to get it done anyway. at the minimum, what we can do is keep trying, keep calling, keep writing. there will be no better health care system if we cannot push ahead now, and push our elected people too.
January 23, 2010 at 3:24 pm
kathy a.
PS — i love my kids, and your kids, and all kids. my son is 22, works full time, and cannot afford health insurance. he lived in a garage until recently. when he was very ill a few months ago, he didn’t want to ask for help until he’d been in pain for a week or so and his infections had become advanced. this is not the worst story by far, but it stinks.
January 23, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Ben Alpers
It’s hard to fight against the feeling that all of this is moot, because ten years from now we will now longer have representatives and senators from each state, they will be representatives and senators from Exxon, AIG, BoA, etc.
Though I’m less sympathetic to the SCOTUS ruling than Glenn Greenwald is, he does have a point when he says that we already have senators from Exxon, AIG, BoA, etc. and that the campaign finance laws that have been struck down have never done much good. The only solution is some system of public financing.
January 25, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Barry
“Though I’m less sympathetic to the SCOTUS ruling than Glenn Greenwald is, he does have a point when he says that we already have senators from Exxon, AIG, BoA, etc. and that the campaign finance laws that have been struck down have never done much good. The only solution is some system of public financing.”
After the Bush years, I’m skeptical of the idea that bad things can’t be made much worse, with lasting effects.
January 27, 2010 at 6:07 am
Ben Alpers
Well, the House seems to have more or less gotten its act together.
Do we get a post pointing out that it’s time to harass the Senate?
(And fwiw Barry, I agree: things can, indeed, always get worse.)
January 27, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Walt
The House news is incredibly exciting. I’m assuming, though, that whatever Obama says in his State of the Union will cripple the initiative.
January 27, 2010 at 3:48 pm
ari
Troll.