Your assignment - work on at least one of the sections below. Make progress today, and report any meaningful news, either through comments or private notes. Enlist your contacts and link freely.
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Here is the summary. The House bill number is H.R. 685. Go to that page and then click "Cosponsors" to view the 83 cosponsors - you might be surprised. (Darlene Hooley in Oregon?)
The bill has been referred to committee. According to Thomas, it has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee (some think the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law) and the Committee on Financial Services.
Finally, a group of twenty Democrats have written a letter to Hastert asking for quick movement on the bill, saying, "It is our hope that the House of Representatives will consider this important piece of legislation in an expedited manner." In a way this is worse than being a cosponsor because one gets the sense they are worried about the political cost of due consideration. (Note the signatures that are not on the cosponsor list.) It's a cynical dismissal of their duties as our representatives. Check the bottom of this post for the letter and the list of representatives that signed.
There are a lot of implicit action items in that chunk of information, so let me spell them out.
Email is okay - if you'd rather simply contact your assigned Senators and Rep, you can use our tool (information). Calling is better. Google a rep's name to find their (206) phone number. From the comments:
Also effective are postal letters to their district (non-DC) offices, letters to the editor, and prepared questions at in-district 'town hall' meetings (call the district offices and ask about the schedule).
Keep telling the "Yea" voters what you think of their votes. I really think there is mileage to be won here. Joe Biden has already written a defensive-sounding letter (bugmenot) to the Los Angeles Times defending his vote, so they are feeling heat. Turn it up. Among Biden's points:
In 2001, a similar bill passed the Senate 82 to 16. The provisions affecting consumer bankruptcy were identical to those Chait criticizes.
I'm also curious what Reid's statement will say. Keep asking.
Check here for the list of Senators that voted Yea, and check here if you only want to see the ones who are up for re-election in 2006.
What would be ideal is turning a Senator; getting them to admit they misjudged the opposition and join the call to oppose the bill's movement. So, don't be so rude that you undermine that objective.
I need information on a tool that will enable us to easily send Letters to the Editor to certain targeted newspapers. Barring that, when we identify the correct subcommittees, we will need information on the hometown newspapers of representatives, and the address to write or email to.
Conservatives, call Rush and gently register your opposition to the bill while making clear that you are not a plant. Liberals, do NOT call Rush, it's just counterproductive.
Contacting Lou Dobbs is definitely worthwhile as he is already talking about the "assault on the middle class". Getting him to mention politology and the coalition could help build more momentum.
Finally, keep letting us know of visible media mentions of this effort.
I would love to hear about people putting together personal lobbying visits to the offices of their Representatives. From the comments:
Time-consuming but powerful are personal lobbying delegations with the Congressperson -- four to six constituents, ideally people with some weight in the community, even better if they are active in the Rep's party. This will require persistent letter and phone work with the Congressperson's scheduler (see congress.org), as well as recruiting and preparation of the group. They can happen in the DC office or at a district office.
The public doesn't really have a lobbying organization, so it's up to average citizens to set up meetings. Here in Oregon, Wu and Hooley definitely need to be paid a visit, and I'd love to hear of the results.
There are also some interesting musings from a legal perspective about this bill. First, Just One Minute has an idea about a "killer amendment" for the bill. I don't know who to contact in the House about ideas such as these, but I will link to and track efforts from people who want to follow up.
Second, via a private note:
There is one large legal flaw in the bill no one seems to have noticed. The means testing provision separates people by state. Simply put, there's no equal protection under the law. A different standard is applied to citizens from different states. That appears unconstitutional from the start.
Here is the text of the letter that twenty Democrats sent to Hastert. See the bottom for their names. Contact them to tell them what you think.
The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
H-232, The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Speaker:
We write to encourage you to bring bankruptcy reform legislation to the House floor as soon as the Senate completes its consideration of the bill. The New Democrat Coalition has backed common sense bankruptcy reform in the past and helped in passing the bankruptcy reform bill by overwhelming margins in the House of Representatives during the 108th Congress.
Over the last several years, we have worked to advance reasonable and balanced legislation that would require individuals who have the ability to repay their debts to do so, while preserving the important safety net of bankruptcy under Chapter 7 for those who truly need it. We believe that responsible bankruptcy reform embodies the New Democrat principle of personal responsibility, while at the same time adding important new consumer protections such as requiring enhanced credit card disclosure information and encouraging participation in consumer credit counseling.
It is our hope that the House of Representatives will consider this important piece of legislation in an expedited manner. We stand ready to work with you and our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass bankruptcy reform into law.
Sincerely,
Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher
Rep. Adam Smith
Rep. Ron Kind
Rep. Artur Davis
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy
Rep. John Larson
Rep. Stephanie Herseth
Rep. Dennis Moore
Rep. Mike McIntyre
Rep. Joe Crowley
Rep. Jay Israel
Rep. David Wu
Rep. Diane Hooley
Rep. Melissa Bean
Rep. Jim Davis
Rep. Harold E. Ford, Jr.
Rep. Ed Case
Rep. Jay Inslee
Rep. Shelley Berkeley
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks
Posted by tunesmith at March 14, 2005 12:11 AM
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Has anyone looked at the impact of long term deployment of National Guard and reserves in Iraq on bankruptcies? These are men and women no longer recieving their primary income while they serve tours of duty in Iraq. How many families of these men and women have been forced into bankruptcy? I have read many comments about how many are seeking bankruptcy (e.g. http://sbc.senate.gov/democrat/record.cfm?id=221422), but I haven't seen any definitive statistical data. That could be a useful point to make to elected officials, about the government on the one hand driving families to bankruptcy by depriving them of of some of their income, and then making it harder for these families to get relief.
Posted by: Scott Aaron at March 14, 2005 12:41 PM
Hi Folks, you might find this a useful resource.
It's THE CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST'S GIANT E-MAIL LINKS PAGE! (A project of The Conservative Caucus). It includes email addresses for every politico you care to mention, as well as talk shows, newspapers,TV stations and shows etc etc.
Handy eh? We lefties have nothing this organised :-( ... so we borrow the conservative's version :-)
Regards, C
PS: Got to agree on the "NOT supporting our troops" angle....Operation Truth, the veterans of Iraq group, have had some stuff on the issue. They are headed by Jesse Ventura. Anyone reading this got enough clout to just call him and get his group involved?
Posted by: Cernig at March 14, 2005 02:20 PM
Just got off the phone with Senator Reid's DC office. I once again asked when the senator's statement on why he voted for the bankruptcy bill would be posted. It is clear that the senator's office is doing what it can to avoid posting his statement, as they will not say when or whether it will be posted rather they offer to read the statement to you.
What follows is the senator's statment as read to me by "Nathan" (I told him that I would be transcribing the statement and posting its contents, and asked that he speak slowly, which he did):
People who have the ability to repay their debts should be required to do so. I support this bill because it puts that principle into law and prevents the abuse of bankruptcy laws.
The bill is flawed in several ways. It does not do enough to protect people who declared bankruptcy due to medical emergencies or military service. It does not do enough to protect the employees of corporations like Enron and Worldcom that declare bankruptcy. And it allows people who engage in unlawful projects to avoid accountability. Democrats offered amendments to address each of these flaws, but they were rejected by the Republican majority. I hope the Congress returns to these important issues in the future.
But even with these flaws, the bill is an improvement over current law and merits my support.
Well, there it is. I should note that Nathan thought that I was being rude and/or threatening because I reminded him that I was going to post my transcription of the statement(I didn't say where and he didn't ask). I did not raise my voice during my conversation with him, nor did I make any threats. I did, however, ask Nathan to consider how it must look to others that the senator would not post his statement on his own site. Interesting, isn't it, that simply telling someone that you are transcribing a spoken statement and posting it on the internets is considered threatening. I transcribed the statement this afternoon, March 14th, at 4:20 p.m.
Posted by: gmb at March 14, 2005 02:24 PM
Arrrgh! I apologize for wrecking the comments section! My only excuse is that it looked totally different in Preview mode. (The HJC members were all bunched together, for one thing, not on separate lines.) This is what I get for trying to copy the committee websites without stripping out the excess HTML first!
Tunesmith, could you fix my post? I'd do it, if I could.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman at March 14, 2005 06:42 PM
I went ahead and deleted the comment.
Posted by: tunesmith at March 14, 2005 07:45 PM
re: the equal protection argument
aren't there already different bankruptcy rules for people in different states under the existing bankruptcy law? the homestead exemption comes to mind, at least. fuel economy standards also vary from the to state (e.g. the "california standard" vs. the "national standard").
i'm a lawyer but both of the above examples are outside my field of expertise. so i just thought i'd throw them out there
Posted by: upyernoz at March 14, 2005 09:27 AM