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Wednesday, Oct 15, is Lobby Your Representative Day
If you are in Washington DC and can join Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care in their lobbying efforts in support of Weiner’s substitute single payer amendment and Kucinich’s state single payer amendment, do so.
House lobby day – Wednesday, October 14th
* Lobby for Weiner HR676 substitute single-payer amendment votes
* Lobby for protection of Kucinich state single-payer option amendmentWe’ll have two sessions of lobbying effort – one early and one later in the day as we may catch more Members as they finish their floor work. Meet your fellow LCGHC members and friends in the Rayburn House Office Building cafeteria at 10 a.m. on Wednesday if you’d like to help lobby Congressional members from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; and if you’d like to come in the afternoon, meeting in the Rayburn HOB cafeteria at 2 p.m. to hear reports from the morning crew and get marching orders for the afternoon lobby efforts
If you can’t get to DC, drop by your Rep’s office in your town, always assuming your representative cares enough about you to have an office near you [need talking points? or handouts?] and as always, call call call!
15 Comments
Thanks so much, Hipp.
As I’ve noted before, the Kucinich amendment is far more crucial than the Weiner, because without it, state-level single-payer initiatives can’t move forward. However, the Kucinich amendment is in the hands of Leadership. Pelosi, Hoyer, and Waxman are the crucial calls to keep it alive.
The Weiner HR 676 swap-out vote is purely symbolic. That said, no Representative who has co-sponsored 676, or voiced support “in principle” for Medicare for All, should be let off the hook.
Dennis Kucinich last month called the Weiner vote a “setup” — a meaningless feel-good offering meant to keep single-payer supporters placated and controlled. I tend to agree. However, a few weeks ago, I had the chance to ask CNA/NNOC’s Donna Smith about this, during a PDA conference call. Here are excerpts of her response:
Questioned further on what she considered the benchmarks for a weak rather than strong showing on the Weiner amendment, Smith said that anything less than 100 votes could be more harmful than helpful, and that the goal is to get more than 150.
What’s essential to tell legislators is that the symbolic vote for the Weiner swap-out does not preclude a subsequent vote for HR 3200 and is not a sign of party disloyalty. It’s a reaffirmation of already-declared support for true reform. Nothing less, and sadly, nothing more.
i am sooo in agreement with donna on this:
i don’t know enough about how congresscritters think to know how many votes would equal a ‘strong showing’ in their minds, but my spies tell me that pelosi would not have allowed or offered a floor vote if she thought it would get a weak showing. my understanding is that there is a good chance for 100 votes, but probably not more than 150.
it’s really, really important that all our reps hear from us, and that they hear us saying THIS is what we REALLY WANT.
I’d like to believe your spies, but I don’t think Pelosi remotely cares how many votes the Weiner swap-out gets.
She promised the floor vote on July 30 to unclog the proceedings in Energy & Commerce and, according to Jane, to neutralize the CPC threat to sink HR 3200 if its already pathetic public option were further weakened by the Blue Dogs. After she made the floor vote promise, CPC members on E&C reversed themselves and helped vote the committee’s Blue Dog-weakened version of the bill out of that committee.
Despite Donna’s comments, I don’t think the vote will have any impact at all. Some 90 representatives are already on record as supporting SP through their co-sponsorship of 676. At best, this vote will allow them to reaffirm that aspiration. Maybe a few more critters will come on board in response to all the phone calls. More likely, though, is that some co-sponsors will chicken out for fear of appearing disloyal to ObRahma.
My greatest concern is that the 676 floor vote will buy Pelosi cover to eliminate the Kucinich amendment by allowing her to claim that she offered something to SP supporters. That would be tragic, because the Kucinich amendment has true, immediate, practical consequences. The Weiner amendment is a shiny object, urgently deserving support only to avoid the embarrassment of a showing that falls short of the 676 co-sponsor count.
heck, even *i* don’t believe my spies. i believe things when i see them happen. mostly it’s just fun to speculate on everybody’s motives, including nancy pelosi’s.
that said, i also believe the way to get single payer is to support any persons and initiatives that actually are about single payer. it’s also my belief that anybody who is telling you that the weiner amdt is a shiny object probably has a vested interest in diverting your interest away from single payer.
if you want congress to enact single payer, you do actually have to ask them to vote for single payer.
Hipp, I want HR 676 or something like it voted on and passed. But achieving something like Medicare for All, which will require decimating an entire powerful business sector, can’t happen by stealth, parliamentary gimmick, or a “sense of the House” vote. It requires a movement on the scale of the civil rights fight of the 1960s. I know you know that.
Apart from a token hearing, late in the game, in the Education and Labor Committee, HR 676 received no consideraton in Congress this year. No committee voted it out. Nothing comparable has been introduced in the Senate, and Bernie Sanders’s less ideal SP bill, S. 703, has zero co-sponsors.
So sure, a symbolic floor vote on HR 676 is great, even historic. But only if nothing of true value was traded away in order to get it.
By credible accounts, the Weiner floor vote has already bought the acquiescence
of progressive members of the E&C Committee to vote out a version of HR 3200 with a fatally flawed (as opposed to merely pathetically weak) public option. That buys Blue Dogs leverage to fight the Medicare+5% rate structure for a PO that less odious Democrats are now trying to preserve.
And if the Weiner floor vote buys Pelosi leverage to sink the Kucinich amendment and tell progressives, “Well but at least I gave you the HR 676 floor vote,” it will have been soooooo not worth it.
Well, my Congresswoman, Yvette Clarke, is definitely voting for the Weiner amendment, per a staffer. One down.
WOO HOO!!!!
snoopy happy dance!!!
you made my day with that. thanks.
hipp … i will dedicate a bunch of hours tonight from NY to call my reps. thanks for the inspiration!
you’re a sweetheart, libby. i just topped up my cell phone minutes tonight so i can start in on them in earnest tomorrow [and next week is the senate, so don't get burned out yet!].
Single payer would be mute, anti trust reform not needed, the healthcare reform bill useless and not needed. Fighting with the insurance companies not needed. IF THEY WOULD NATIONALIZE THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY, and throw out the profit takers, taking over their systems and businesses to use for government run but those companies doing the administraiting that they are doing now. The gov. wouldn’t have to start new agencies, hire people, and set up systems because they would already have them. The profits could be used to subsidize people who needed it, and we would not have to as taxpayers anti up.
This to simple, for the retards in Washington to comprehend, and they might have to give up the campaign contributions from the profit takers. It would be what’s right for the country and our wallets, but when have they ever done the right thing.
NATIONALIZE THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY
damn straight!
iremember54 October 14th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
“nationalize health insurance industry”
…..
While I appreciate your good intentions, what you’re proposing is doubly redundant.
You’re proposing we continue to pay 30% vigorish to a bookie to hold your money and then give what’s left back to you. The health insurance industry is not a capitalist enterprise because it adds NO VALUE, the core of capitalism. Instead, health insurance industry is a collection of sinecures which have been granted anti-trust status to collect vigorish.
That 30% vigorish health insurers (sic) take in totals about $300-450 BILLION a year that will never pay for a penny of medical care.
We DON’T NEED a health insurance industry, so nationalizing it is a double waste of time. The core functions are already handled by Medicare: reimbursement (payment) platform; a set of codes representing approved procedures, medications, devices and best practices (google ICD-9M and CPT-4 as examples); and people skilled at medical efficacy analysis and negotiation.
My congressman, Pete Stark, supports Medicare for All because it makes financial sense for the nation. I reached my analysis before reading HR 676 and discovering Pete was already there.
I agree; thanks. Small correction: the PNHP-estimated annual savings of $350-400 billion would derive from multiple sources, not just the insurance sector — eg, from the reduction of provider-side resources needed to service (and battle) multiple payers.
Did You take notice that Medicare is unsustainable and about to go broke, so that’s great, give it to all of us, so well all will have no care.
If old Stark had any sense, He would think aliitle about what He is proposing.
The Government has no money, medicare is about thiry eight trillion dollars short, no fixes even bing considered. Boy that’s smart.
Stop and think about all the rest of what you wrote, it is just about as smart. Anti trust doesn’t change much, because it still leaves the same crooks running the show, and they set the prices no matter what the Governments says. If your eye offends you pluck it out, don’t avoid mirrors so you can’t see it.
Did You take notice that Medicare is unsustainable and about to go broke, so that’s great, give it to all of us, so well all will have no care.
medicare is not unsustainable, and the about to go broke meme is just that, a meme. the medicare trust funds aren’t as well-funded as the social security trust fund is, but they’re in better shape than they have been at just about any time in the past. put everybody in medicare, use the govt’s buying power to set prices on drugs, doctor fees, hospitals, etc, and raise taxes. all of which hr 676 does.