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AFA of PA ACTION ALERT
December 19, 2009
Issues (check corresponding number in ‘Details’ and ‘Action’ Sections)
Senator Nelson Bought Off; 1:00 a.m. Monday vote planned
Details
Apparently it just took a big enough ‘money offer’ to get Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) to change his stand on abortion in health care! The price was $300 million in Medicaid assistance similar to what Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu received to buy her vote. During a Saturday morning press conference he announced his support for the Senate health care bill. Several pro-life groups have spent Saturday analyzing the Reid manager’s amendment which contains the compromise language. Section 38 adds a provision allowing states to opt out of providing abortion coverage through the exchange and adds further layers of accounting requirements that pro-life groups are calling gimmicks to hide abortion funding. This amendment language is nothing like the one passed in the House earlier this month. The new "public option" managed by the Office of Personnel and Management (OPM) will cover abortions. Each state through OPM can provide two multi-state plans and only one of them will exclude abortions.
According to Eagle Forum the bill will also:
- Costs almost $1 trillion - $871 billion (and that's CBO's modest estimate not factoring in the full ten years after it goes into effect),
- Cuts Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars,
- Raises and imposes a vast array of new taxes on the American people,
- Allows for federal funding of abortion,
- Retains the CLASS Act (which the Democrat Chairman of the Budget Committee has described as nothing more than a "Ponzi Scheme"),
- Massively expands Medicaid, giving special treatment to a select few states so that taxpayers in VA, AR, and OH will have to pay higher taxes to subsidize the Medicaid program of a favored few, such as NE, MA, and VT.
Action Steps
1.) Call and leave messages at Senator Casey’s Washington office NOW. If you wait until the offices open Monday morning, your call will be too late because the cloture vote is scheduled for 1:00 a.m. Monday morning. If that voice mail is full, call the district office nearest you. The message: “Even though it is less than a week till Christmas, we are watching your vote. A vote for cloture is a vote for abortion.” Make sure you leave your name and address so he knows you’re really from PA. Calls to Senator Specter’s office can also be made, click here for his contact info.
It is now believed that when/if Senator Reid gets his version passed, he’s going to deliver it to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and say, “Here vote on it without amendments.” That will avoid a conference committee which would have worked out the differences in the House version and the Senate version and come up with the compromise bill which would then have to go back to both the House and Senate for final votes. So, it appears that the vote on final passage will be THE vote in the Senate for the health care bill. This scenario would place the bill on the President’s desk for his signature before the end of the year, which is their goal.
Here’s Senator Casey’s contact info:
Washington, D.C. office: toll free -- 866-802-2833 or (202) 224-6324 or fax: (202) 228-0604
Senator Casey’s district offices:
Harrisburg Toll Free: (866) 461-9159; Fax: (717) 231-7542
Philadelphia (215) 405-9660; Fax: (215) 405-9669
Pittsburgh (412) 803-7370; Fax: (412) 803-7379
Scranton (570) 941-0930; Fax: (570) 941-0937
Erie (814) 874-5080; Fax: (814) 874-5084
Bellefonte (814) 357-0314; Fax: (814) 357-0318
Allentown (610) 782-9470; Fax: (610) 782-9474
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