Following onto my Health Care Reform diary from yesterday, I wrote my letter to my Representatives. I posted it as an open letter on Congress.org. And I thought I would post it hear too. I encourage you to just copy it and send it to your Democratic reps.
I wouldn't bother sending it to Repubs, since it's basically about the impact of HCR on 2010 Democratic election strategy. Plus, HCR has always been a line in the sand issue for Repubs. Their opposition is guaranteed.
Dems who are at the very least interested in self-preservation ought to be fighting even harder for reform with a public option. And if done right, the Massachusetts election doesn't make it any harder.
See the text of the letter in the body after the jump. It'll only take a couple of minutes to simply copy and paste it into a web form for your reps.
Oh, and please hit the Recommend Button in the sidebar to get more folks to see and copy this letter! -->
The text of my letter follows:
Dear Senator Harry Reid and Representative Dina Titus,
I m a proud constituent of yours from Henderson, Nevada. And I look forward to doing what I can to help both of you get re-elected this fall. But, I'm terrified that it may not happen.
I have very vivid and depressing memories of 1994 - when the Democrats lost control of both chambers of Congress. It took 12 dark years before reclaiming control. I'm worried that after only 4 years, Republicans will again regain control after this November's elections.
If you look back at the causes of the 1994 Republican sweep, one major failure stood out - Health Care Reform. It's was a pillar of President Clinton's 1992 campaign for "Change". Therefore the failure of Health Care Reform cast the shadow of failure over Congress and the President. In the ensuing election, the Democrats were cast out - despite an improving economy after a bad recession.
Now there's that saying about "Those that don't know history …" You know it. And hopefully you are seeing what I see - the possibility of 1994 being repeated this year. But a repetition of 1994 can be averted. Health Care Reform has been the top legislative news story for much of the last year. Despite some celebration over the Christmas Eve Senate passage of the bill, a lot of voters weren't celebrating. You've seen the polls and the majority of voters (Independents and even some moderate Republicans as well) wanted to see a public option. Without the public option in the bill, many voters simply saw the bill as a potential booster of Insurance industry revenues given the bill's health insurance mandate language.
Those of us that follow politics know that Joe Lieberman killed the public option. And with it, he brought down the general opinion of Democrats and killed Martha Coakley's chances for victory. I know it too. And I'm not going to hold you responsible for Joe Lieberman's mess in the Fall. I am not like all voters. The polls are clearly showing that voters aren't paying attention to technical issues. That's bad news and it has to be repaired.
But I know we can pass real Health Care Reform that will make public option supporters happy. And it can be done even after Scott Brown is seated.
In this week's post-election news, I've been seeing some encouraging remarks coming out of Washington. But also some head spinning defeatist remarks as well. The voters don't want defeatists in office. They want strong fighters who will bring about the change that President Obama was supposed to usher in. From polling history over the last year, we can see that most of the disappointment amongst voters (reflected in the big drop from his once 70% approval rating) comes largely from the delays and disappointments incurred during the legislative effort for health care. With low presidential approval numbers a mid-term loss for the President's party in Congress almost always follows.
Anyway, my point is that to save the Democrats from losing the House and Senate in the fall, you can't capitulate - capitulation is what voters are angry about right now. You have to get stronger in resolve for visible changes in health care.
And the good news is that the hard part - achieving 60 votes in the Senate - is done as long as the current bill doesn't change before a House vote. Sure, there's talk that many Democrats in the House won't support the Senate version of the bill. But, if my understanding of Congressional rules is correct, there's a very easy way to make progressive Democrats in the House happy. And I think it goes like this:
- Give the House enough of what they want in a new, short, and sweet reconciliation bill before bringing the current bill up for a vote in the House. Put tax/budget issues and corrections in the reconciliation bill such as the public option and a fix to the issue regarding the tax on high cost insurance plans that could anger union voters. Perhaps injecting language to restrict the tax to company officers or folks making over $250,000 would make everyone happy - well, real American's at least.
- Vote on the add-on reconciliation bill in the Senate and House. Since it's reconciliation, only 51 votes are needed.
- Now it should be safe to vote on the existing, Senate version of the HCR bill in the House. At this point House concerns regarding the bill will have been addressed by the already passed reconciliation bill.
- Both bills go to the Prez for signing at nearly the same time. The President simply signs them in the order they were passed by the Senate.
Thank you for reading this and Good Luck.
Links to write your Reps:
The House: https://writerep.house.gov/...
The Senate: http://www.senate.gov/...
Both (via Congress.org): http://www.congress.org/...
If a good HCR passes, it will change everything about the 2010 Elections. Congressional approval numbers will increase. Instead of the President's party losing seats in Congress, a gain might even be possible. And the recent elections in MA, NJ, and NY will simply be a small bump on the road.