Health Care Phone Calls

I just received an email asking me to call my U.S. senators and ask them to support health care reform. Well, of course both of my senators already do support it. But it's an important weekend in the Senate - the threat of a filibuster hangs over the heads of these men and women - so I thought a phone call from me and hundreds (thousands?) of others could be helpful.

This is what I said to both Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Maria Cantwell's offices: stand firm. Fight for the public option. And if Repubs and conservative Dems want to filibuster that - let them filibuster. The polls - even just this week - show that the public supports the public option. If the naysayers want to fight upstream on that issue, let them. Let's see if they will join in that filibuster already. Let it all unfold. Let the chips fall where they may. I'd rather see a fight for the public option than have my senators not fight for it at all.

(BTW - a filibuster is when senators fight against agreeing to consider a bill. This bill only needs 50 votes to pass on the floor, but it needs 60 votes for cloture. If the senators want to delay that consideration, then they have to have something to say in the meantime - hence, the "filibuster." This is when they might start reading from the phone book, just to keep the bill from floor debate. This happens only in the Senate, not the House. In modern times, apparently just saying the word "filibuster" was enough to keep the thing from consideration. But the Senate leader has the option of requiring a traditional filibuster too. Okay, so now I just called Harry Reid's office - Senate leader - and asked that he require a traditional filibuster, if it comes to that.)