The toll free US Capitol Main Switchboard number is 800-828-0498. (Local number is 202-224-3121). Please contact your representatives in DC today.
Update: Two more toll-free numbers are 800-459-1887 & 800-614-280. (Thanks, annefrank!)
Why? Here's why:
President Bush and congressional leaders began negotiating a second war funding bill yesterday, with Democrats offering the first major concession: an agreement to drop their demand for a timeline to bring troops home from Iraq.
Democrats backed off after the House failed, on a vote of 222 to 203, to override the president's veto of a $124 billion measure that would have required U.S. forces to begin withdrawing as early as July. But party leaders made it clear that the next bill will have to include language that influences war policy. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) outlined a second measure that would step up Iraqi accountability, "transition" the U.S. military role and show "a reasonable way to end this war."
I'll keep this short. If the Democrats are preparing to strip the funding bill of binding language to re-deploy the troops in Iraq, then they are about to defy the voters in this country, and give the President what he's wanted all along.
Please call your legislators today (it's toll free!), and tell them not to back down when they are winning. Every call counts, and it's really easy.
The point of our democratic republic is that they do what we want.
So, what do you want? Timetables? Or "benchmarks"?
Update 2: Looks like there is more to this story:
Pelosi just went before the Democratic caucus and informed them that the story's false, a Pelosi aide tells me. WaPo is standing by the story, and the lead writer of the Post piece, Jonathan Weisman, told me that leadership aides told him that the withdrawal language had to go. But the WaPo story goes further than that, saying explicitly that Dems have already "backed down" and offered the concession of removing the withdrawal language. Those aren't the same thing.
Even more reason to call. Make sure that capitulation does not happen.