Does it count as an organized effort if I wrote an e-mail and sent it to more than 200 of my friends and family urging them to do just this? I did this on Friday, before the PTDB meme was as developed as it is now. It struck a chord -- many people are e-mailing me to tell me they have taken action and are sending it on.

Your readers can do it too. They can refer people to the Capitol switchboard (202) 224-3121 and ask for their Rep's office. If they don't know who that is, they can find out here: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

Both my wife and I have called our Democratic Congressman, but sadly, both of our Senators are Republicans (we live in Georgia). So, to those of you represented by Democratic senators--those of us who are outnumbered by Limbaugh/Hannity/Boortz groupies are relying on you to call your Senator to make sure that the job is finished via reconciliation.

Let's go!!!

STOP CALLING, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! STOP CALLING! THE BILL IS DEAD! SUCK MY DICK! SUCK IT!

My wife and I were both born with genetic disorders, and we're being driven into bankruptcy by this bullshit. But they haven't disconnected our phone yet.

I stopped by Gerry Connolly's local office and told his district director to PTDB -- that I'd rather see him going out in blaze of glory- doing the right thing -- if it meant electoral defeat this fall.

There, I just called both bitches.

To hell with the need for assurances from the Senate. The House can force the issue by itself, today, tonight, tomorrow. Pass the damn bill, pass an amendment to the House's liking in the next few days (or today, tonight or tomorrow if they can find some staffers to burn the midnight oil), and continued political pressure will force the Senate to move it to reconciliation. The public option becomes more popular the better it is understood, and it will become better understood when there is more laser-like focus on it. The narrative that can be built around the opt-out public option -- how fair it is to states that want it and those that don't want it, how Senators should be compelled by common decency and collegiality to respect the wishes of the citizens of other states represented by other Senators -- can be made powerful, perhaps almost irresistible.

Since these things will have budget impact, they all should be subject to the reconciliation process. Certainly the public option, which has a favorable budget impact -- hear that, WaPo? -- but it also includes the Cadillac tax, because the more successful it is in achieving a policy goal of moderating health insurance plans, the less revenue from the tax will be received. The rich-people's tax is more popular anyway.

If that was really Praedor, that was damned funny. Even if it was just somebody making fun of Praedor, it was still pretty funny.

When you call or write, you can refer the person you talk to to Steve's essay at passthedamnbill.com or healthyamericanfuture.com .

called both senator's after the wrentham truck-driver won and there was some statement issued by DSCC that teh math made it hard to govern, voiced displeasure, asked if they subscribed to that crap and urged them to get sh** done. house member received calls also.

I got emails from both SEIU and Healthcare For American now asking me to call my reps today, and I called. I'm glad to hear it's a call to arms being taken up around the country.

Looks like it's a battle between most liberals' PTDB message and the teabag-FDL PLDL10 message (Please let Dems lose in 2010) ...

I can be crystal clear to my Democratic Party. No spine? No vote and no money from me.

The Democrats caved to Bush when the country needed them. Now the Democrats are caving to Republicans again, although they are a small minority that is roundly despised and without a coherent platform.

How does support for Democrats actually matter? Pathetic is too gentle a word.

The legislative aide wanted to know if the phone calls were part of an organized effort so they could discount them.

"at the end of the day, lawmakers are probably more likely to be influenced by their own constituents than anyone else."

Campaign donors speak much more loudly than individual phone calls. Unless polls show that a strong majority favor the passage of the bill, it doesn't matter how many people call a Congress person's office. A call is one vote, unless you have money, who cares what you think.

Mark Kleiman called his senator today

I thought that the House was supposed to pass the Senate version. In the Senate, the House version can't even get to a vote.

I've Barbara Lee's office twice last week, and will get going on the faxes, too. As of last week, her staff were saying that she has not taken a position on PTDB.

I had emailed my rep (Pete Stark) last week, but after reading these comments decided to call directly. I called his Fremont office, urged that he pass the Senate bill as is, and the nice woman who took my call said they'd "been getting lots of calls like this" and she would add my name to the list. So it sounds like there *is* pressure building. (She also said Rep. Stark has not yet taken a position on whether to pass it as-is, and they are still in negotiations.)

My email to Sheila Jackson Lee:

Pass The D*mn Bill (PTDB)

The future (and the proud history) of the Democratic Party rests in the hands of the Democrats in the House of Representatives.

As a vocal member of this majority, you have a choice. You have the ability to preserve our history and ensure a strong future by passing the Senate Bill. Or you can dismiss the work of so many before you and cripple the party in the future by rejecting the Senate Bill.

The future of the Democratic Party is directly tied to the health and lives of tens of thousands Americans who will be saved by the Senate Bill.

Are there problems with the bill? Yes, but I challenge any Representative hesitant to pass the Senate Bill to name a perfect bill. Name a bill that once enacted and enforced directly and without omission or excess reflected the pure intent of the congressmen and women who passed it.

You can't. A legislative body can only hope that the bills they draft and pass will result in the goals they set out to achieve. More often than not, those goals must be addressed in subsequent legislation in order to narrowly tailor or broaden the impact of the legislation.

This is the process. To even begin to address the many healthcare problems in America, we must first Pass The D*mn Bill. Too much oxygen and too much "political capital" has been spent to get the bill this far. Setting it aside on the hopes of better bill would require waiting for a new Democratic administration and a stronger majority of progressive minds in the Senate. Is that something you're willing to gamble will happen again in your lifetime or in your remaining time in the House?

If not, then Pass The D*mn Bill. Then we can set out to make it better.

I'm from Vermont (the land of pretty darn good congressfolks) and called my Senators, twice, last week and my Rep 3 times, each time ranting about how Dems were acting as though they'd lost 40 seats not one, and pushing them to get the healthcare reform done. None of the nice people I yelled at gave me any idea of where their bosses stood on the current impasse, except to say that they were in favor of reform. I hope my clear anger at what was going on will help, but who knows?

I don't think many here seem to be willing to face the reality that the House doesn't have the votes to PTDB. Pelousi herself has said so and more and more Reps are only seconding her opinion. The Senate bill is dead. It's not going anywhere no matter how many emails, faxes, etc. we send to our Reps.

This is just getting increasingly depressing, with so-called liberals hanging their hats on a profoundly regressive bill (sure, it has "good bits", that doesn't stop the whole from being a disaster) simply because they see it as the only option out there.

I agree that Congress and the Senate need to be pressurized to pass something, but the rejection of a weaker but progressive bill in favor of the Senate Bill merely because the latter took a lot of effort to make, speaks volumes for mainstream Democrats. Can you really blame Senators and Representatives for giving up when the Progressive base appears to have given up fighting for anything meaningful?

Still, as has been pointed out, it just isn't going to happen. There are not the votes in Congress, nor in the Senate. As Steve Benen has somehow avoided mentioning, they've already tried to find fifty-one senators who'd be willing to sign a letter promising Congress they'd use reconciliation to make some of the changes necessary to make the Senate bill fractionally less evil, and they didn't get it. There aren't 51 votes.

And there aren't that many rightist representatives who'd be willing to vote for the Senate bill unmodified.

The PTDB people need to stop wasting everyone's time, and need to start pressuring Congress and the Senate to pass meaningful health reform. A lighter bill that nonetheless moves everything in the right direction is infinitely preferable to a heavy, insane, bill that destroys the cause of health care reform.

Alas, I'm talking to a brick wall. The PTDB people aren't rational, they have no principles left, and they don't care what they're destroying.

Whether or not you think the bill should be passed, it seems clear the Democrats need somebody like Tommy "the Hammer" DeLay. Oh, not a twisted corrupt son-of-a-bitch reeking of entitlement, that's not what I meant. Somebody who can enforce party discipline the way DeLay could, arm-twisting and scaring as necessary to make walleyed Republicans fall in line.

Harry Reid, who seems to be made of chicken livers and with a spine of pure al dente pasta, can't get it done.

whether or not you think the bill should be passed, it seems clear the democrats need somebody like tommy "the hammer" delay. oh, not a twisted corrupt son-of-a-bitch reeking of entitlement, that's not what i meant. somebody who can enforce party discipline the way delay could, arm-twisting and scaring as necessary to make walleyed republicans fall in line

mark, you want lyndon johnson.

alas, he's not available.

Good.
Pass the damned bill!
31 million uninsured (among others) are waiting, and dying.

Helpful advice from Balloon Juice: When they ask you if you're part of any organized calling effort, you can say something like, "I'm from the blogosphere. We don't DO 'organized.'"

A lighter bill that nonetheless moves everything in the right direction is infinitely preferable to a heavy, insane, bill that destroys the cause of health care reform.

OK, even though I'm a PTDBer, I'll try to address this rationally:

How do you propose Dems pass a "lighter" bill? They can't start over because they can't get a new bill through the Senate. They can't pass everything through reconciliation because the Byrd Rule puts a lot of limits on what can be passed that way.

Two more question:

1. Considering that Dems' spines have suddenly turned to jelly since last Tuesday (well, turned even jellier), why do you think dragging the process out for another few months as new bills wend their way through Congress would make reform more likely?

2. When Social Security first passed, it was significantly worse than it ended up being, but Dems were able to pass fixes in subsequent years. By contrast, when health-care reform failed in '94, it took us 15 years just to get back to a point where we have a (less progressive) bill with a chance of passing. Given those historical examples, what makes you think that a "heavy" bill would "destroy" health-care reform whereas a "light" bill would "move it in the right direction"? Or to put it another way, if the Senate bill (which covers 30 million people) isn't progressive enough, why would it then be a good idea to pass HCR Lite that only covers half as many people (even assuming it could be passed)?

Republicans are giddy with their "great victory" that gives them, incrementally, more power to obstruct and interfere. Show of hands, who thinks they feel that way because they welcome the opportunity to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better bill - one that eliminates giveaways to the insurance companies and strictly regulates the manner in which they can do business, while introducing honest competition? Matthew, put your effing hand down. Anyone else? That's what I thought.

The current bill is flawed, perhaps even awful, but a stronger bill will be filibustered to a standstill by the Republicans. There is absolutely no chance at all that Republicans will sign on to a bill that restricts the abilities of their generous patrons to prey on the hapless public, none. They're just interested in running out the clock with endless delays until passage of any kind of reform is acknowledged to be impossible. Then they'll clamour that they love the idea of reform, just not the Democrat's plan. Joe Sixpack will believe them, even though Scott Brown promised when he was elected to kill health care reform. Expecting bipartisanship out of the Republicans now is like squeezing a turd and expecting tomato juice.

It literally is the present bill, or nothing. If it's nothing, Obama will be a one-term president, and the next occupant of the driver's seat will be a Republican, likely with a majority in both houses.

Most Americans are not going to think the Senate bill is awful when they find out what's actually in it -- as opposed to what some people say is in it. That goes in both directions.

My e-mail to Lloyd Doggett below. He's an absolute badass congressman most of the time, but I think he's been wavering on the bill because of its obvious deficiencies. I sent something like this to my senators as well, not that those turkeys are likely to drop the GOP line:

Hi Lloyd, this is a longtime constituent and supporter of yours from the Hyde Park area, currently living in Australia but soon to return to Austin.

I am writing you, in the wake of the blow the Democrat's caucus has suffered this week in the special election in Massachusetts, to urge you to work towards the passage of health care reform, even if that means House passage of the Senate bill.

This is a far cry from what I was hoping for as far as health care reform, but please pass this legislation anyway. It is important to acclimate the American people towards the idea of reforming health care, and I believe walking away from that objective now would be devastating not only to the cause of health care reform, but to the Democrats in November.

It has become obvious to me that passing a sensible, comprehensive health care bill may be impossible in the American system of governance. The checks and balances, and peculiarities such as the filibuster, perplex my Australian friends to no end. But I am hopeful that we have it in us as a party to band together and pass some real legislation, even if it will require significant improvement further down the road.

Thank you for your time.

I called Menendez, Lautenberg, Pascrel yesterday. All of them way ahead of me. As a resident of NJ I am starting to feel decidedly superior.

thanks for sharing thoes informations , It is interesting, i like it!

well good artical