|
November 23, 2003
Up until three hours into what should have been a 15-minute vote, we had stopped the Medicare prescription-drug bill in the U.S. House.
Late into the three-hour vote, one member of Congress commented to Congressman Ron Paul that his Liberty Caucus had "saved the Republicans..." and had pulled it off. Congressman Paul also heard from several other House colleagues that they were getting a lot of E-mails, faxes and phone calls from "Liberty Committee people."
We're extremely pleased that 11 of the 25 "no" votes are members of The Liberty Caucus. We are, however, especially disappointed with two of our caucus members, Butch Otter (Idaho) and Trent Franks (Arizona). They were the two members who caved into pressure and changed their vote, thus ushering in what will become the largest federal entitlement program in U.S. history. We are also disappointed in the other caucus members who voted in
favor of this "entitlement" monster. Details about what happened during the three-hour vote will be given later.
The issue at hand is focusing our efforts in the U.S. Senate. The Senate is scheduled to vote on the bill Monday, November 23. We need to exert the same pressure in the Senate as we did in the House. Unfortunately, we have no organized caucus in the Senate to help defeat the bill, and that makes your efforts even more critical.
We oppose the Medicare prescription-drug bill as does Senator Ted Kennedy, but for a very different reason. Kennedy and the Democrats want health care run totally by the federal government and paid for by taxes and borrowing: in short, socialized medicine. We oppose the bill, but again, for quite a different reason. Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona (a member of The Liberty Caucus) who voted against the bill in the House said it
best: "This proposal flies in the face of the principles of limited government and individual responsibility that Republicans are suppose to stand for. The enormous cost of this proposal will only hasten Medicare’s insolvency, and we’ll have to rely on future Congresses to have the political courage that this Congress lacks. In the end, I think this looks like nothing more than an extremely expensive way to buy votes."
Senator John McCain, also of Arizona, has vowed to stop it. This afternoon, CNN reported the following: "McCain, appearing with Kennedy on ABC's 'This Week,' said he, too, would join the filibuster, but for different reasons.
'I come from a different exact opposite point from Ted,' McCain said. 'He wants to make it bigger, I want to make it better.' McCain said the new program would fail and 'add another $8 trillion in unfunded mandates that we're laying on our kids.'
With that in mind -- added to the country's overall budget deficit -- the Arizonan questioned 'what's ever happened to my party's fiscal discipline?'
'Somehow we've lost our way,' he said. 'And we are laying a terrible burden on the next generation of Americans.'"
The fight isn't over. We still have a chance in the Senate. Urge your senators to oppose the Medicare prescription-drug bill, not for the reason of Senator Ted Kennedy, but for the reason of Senator John McCain and Representative Jeff Flake.
Send your senators an E-mail or call them or, better yet, do both. That’s what made such an impression in the House.
Send an E-mail message:
http://capwiz.com/liberty/issues/alert/?alertid=4290501&type=CO
Call your senators: 202-224-3121
Kent Snyder
The Liberty Committee
http://www.thelibertycommittee.org |