Dear Senators

By Red State Eddio

Filed Under Congress, Domestic Policy, Policy on Jul 2 

This is the letter I faxed to both of my US Senators yesterday. I felt like they needed to hear from a private citizen of their state the mood and passion about the current legislation (health care and climate control). Actually, this is the first time I ever directly contacted either one. Not like they’re taking my calls these days…

Feel free to copy and use it, or craft your own to tell your Senator how you feel.
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July 1, 2009

Senators Arlen Specter & Bob Casey Jr

Dear Senators:

As a resident of the great commonwealth of PA, I need to communicate something of importance to you. I understand you are being urged by the President to sign his two signature pieces of legislation on health care and climate control. He has given his plea. Now I give you mine.

Please do not subject the US to economic suicide for the sake of appeasing a very persuasive speaker and leader. Others can argue more persuasively than I might be able to, but I just want you to hear from me—one of your many constituents who are deeply concerned about the future direction of the country stemming from these bills before Congress.

Our healthcare, while not being perfect, works for over 85% of the population. Rather than scrap the entire arrangement and come up with a plan that is already fraught with flaws and shortcomings and saddled with a massive debt load that will bankrupt us faster than you can say “heart attack”, the president could convene summits with business leaders to brainstorm creative answers to these issues instead of lumping it all onto the government’s lap—the same government that cannot run Medicare, cannot run Medicaid, and simply cannot manage programs like these at all.

My plea to you is this – vote no for the health care legislation as it currently stands before the House and Senate.

As for the global warming bill, frankly we are committing economic suicide if we pass this. I find it ironic that the President, as a candidate in the fall, decried the outsourcing of jobs to other countries like India and China—yet is now poised by this piece of legislation to make the biggest outsourcing of non-returnable manufacturing jobs to those very same countries.

We will lose those jobs, and never get them back. For all the green jobs promised in the future, we will lose three times as many manufacturing jobs and jobs currently designed to manage today’s energy infrastructure in our country. Do you want your own grandchildren and great-grandchildren having that crisis looming over them—with the knowledge that you put them in that position?

If you sign these bills, you are subjecting the United States to a second world, or possibly third world, status shortly down the road over the next two decades.

Consider the crushing load of unsustainable debt and the dead-end trajectory you are consigning us to if you sign these pieces of legislation.

I strongly urge you to vote no for both. The science is debatable, the rhetoric borders on hubris, and the outcomes are far from accurate. I for one am not snookered by this foolish charade being foisted upon the American people. Don’t you be fooled as well.

[my name]
[my address]
[my city and state]

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Comments

7 Comments

  1. Sartho on 02.07.2009 at 11:14 (Reply)

    Very good letter! I’m happy to say we might only have one congressman who would be interested in a yes vote on any of these or else I’d be filling in the name and address section in my Microsoft Word right now.

  2. Clint on 02.07.2009 at 11:52 (Reply)

    Awesome letter in a state that we need on our side. I am from SC and I know Jim Demint will vote no.. he is one of the few true conservatives. Lindsay Graham I do not know about. I will be writing him myself.

    Clint

  3. Alaina on 02.07.2009 at 12:36 (Reply)

    Wow! Great letter!

  4. Stephanie on 02.07.2009 at 14:22 (Reply)

    Fantastic letter! I am still waiting for an official response from my Congressman, the honorable Barney Frank (this is where you express a sigh of pity for me), regarding my opposition to Cap and Trade (he obviously was not persuaded to vote no). Regardless,I always look forward to hearing how they rationalize their abysmal decision making. Here is Barney’s response to my plea for his support of HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act. The staffers that check his constituent emails must hate me as I’m one of his most frequent correspondents – and it’s not usually fan mail.

    June 15, 2009

    Dear Ms. Pickup:

    Thank you for expressing your support for H.R. 1207. I have told Ron Paul, with whom I have worked closely on a number of issues, that I agree with the general thrust of his bill and I am planning to see that we take action on this subject in the committee which I chair. There have already been some moves forward in increasing the transparency of the Federal Reserve, and I agree that there are further steps we can take. I cannot at this point tell you exactly how I think we should proceed, but I will be in the next few weeks meeting with the chairs of the subcommittees who have jurisdiction over this matter, as well as with Representative Paul, to plan a course of action that will result in much more openness with regard to the activities of the Federal Reserve. I also intend when this current crisis is over to seek an amendment to the law which was passed in 1932 and signed by Herbert Hoover, which gives the Federal Reserve vast powers to lend money to any entity in America which it deems sufficiently collateralized whenever the Federal Reserve thinks there are exigent circumstances. I do believe that the Federal Reserve is exercising that power with some good effects recently, but it is not a power that should exist in a democratic society in the hands of an entirely unelected entity and I will be working next year to put some restraints on this power as well.

    BARNEY FRANK BF/JN

    In order to ensure that my office is able to record incoming communications properly, please use the “email Barney Frank” link at the top of the home page (http://www.house.gov/frank/) underneath my signature if you wish to contact me again.

  5. Lizzy on 02.07.2009 at 14:28 (Reply)

    Great letter. Stunning it has to be articulated like this to them, as if they had no more than a third grade public school education.

  6. JE on 02.07.2009 at 14:44 (Reply)

    I emailed my congressman on cap and trade and he was one of the few dems who voted against it in the house. He (his staffer) wrote back saying he was against it but now it is on to the senate and i should contact the senators to let them know how i feel. I am from illinois so my senators are dick durbin and roland burris (or whoever pays to replace him at some point). Needless to say i will save my time for something more beneficially…like collecting lightning bugs to keep the house lit once these idiots get all their bills through.

  7. treen on 02.07.2009 at 22:25 (Reply)

    How did you send these? If they went by snail mail, it takes FOREVER because everything gets screened before it goes to the Hill. Fax them as well.

    Also, I would encourage everyone to CALL as well as sending the letters. I sat in a Senate office once while waiting for a meeting and watched 3 people manage the phones that were ringing off the hook. True, they were just doing tally marks – “X people for and X people against” at the end of the day, but they add up and it matters.

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