call day

OFA has a big call day today, trying to get 100,000 calls to Congress in one day. They have a bunch of call parties tonight and I was feeling guilty about not signing up for one. I'm happy to call my reps, but I don't really want to phone bank regular people and ask them to call.

Since I didn't go to a call party tonight, I called my reps again this afternoon. Price and Hagan's offices were fine. I told the staffer I had been following the debate all summer, asked them to thank their boss, and got confirmation that they still support the public option. Hagan's office took my name & my town; Price's did not.

I actually had a pleasant conversation with Burr's staffer. He started out by saying flatly that Burr does not support the bill. I've had a lot of mealy-mouthed letters from senators, and I appreciated his honest answer so much that I tried to engage, which was probably a mistake. I asked the staffer what Burr would do instead, and he said that Burr prefers a plan of tax cuts and preventing the pre-existing condition exclusion. I replied "well my understanding is that the current bill does prevent exclusion based on pre-existing conditions," and he fell back on repeating a bunch of jargon without saying anything. He sounded a little flummoxed. Maybe he wasn't prepared to go off script. Most callers probably just want to vent & don't actually try to have a conversation about the merits of the bill.

While he was babbling he said something to the effect that Burr's main objection was to the public option. So I asked, "if the current bill came to a vote without the public option, would the senator vote for it?" At this point he started totally bullshitting me. He said something vague, I can't remember the exact wording, but something like "the senator wants to see every American have access to health care," which was clearly designed to make me think he was saying "yes, Burr would vote for a public option-less bill." Which is obviously false. Burr will never, ever vote for the bill. He voted against the Franken amendment for god's sake. The guy is so deep into "Party of No" territory he'll vote for rape if it means voting against the Democrats.

At this point I realized that the conversation was a waste of my time so I wished him a nice day and hung up. At least it was a pleasant waste of time. I thought about bringing up the Franken amendment but decided against it, because the subject makes me so angry that I would have started yelling at the staffer. Maybe I should write a letter instead.