KEY VOTE “NO” ON ANTICIPATED CLOTURE AND FINAL PASSAGE HEALTHCARE VOTES

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Dear Senator:                 

On behalf of hundreds of thousands of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to VOTE NO on the ANTICIPATED CLOUTURE AND FINAL PASSAGE VOTES for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s government takeover of the healthcare system.  It is expected that Senator Reid will file three cloture motions in the coming days.  This would set up a decisive cloture vote now planned for 1 a.m. Monday.  And according to Majority Whip Durbin’s office, final passage could come as soon as Christmas Eve or even on Christmas Day.  In this instance, it is well known that the CLOTURE VOTES are the critical votes as they require 60 votes.  We will make sure that your constituents know exactly how you vote on each.   

As I hope you have seen, an average of the ten most recent reputable national polls shows only 38 percent of Americans support this bill, while 51 percent oppose it.  This is because the American people know Senator Reid’s bill fails to provide the reforms that we were promised.  With increased tax burdens on middle class families, provisions that lead to higher insurance premiums, cuts to Medicare that hurt seniors, massive new entitlement spending and nothing to reduce skyrocketing healthcare costs, this legislation is flawed beyond repair. 

Over the past year, the American people have turned out in overwhelming numbers to express their opposition to such destructive “solutions.”  From April 15th tea parties to summer town hall meetings to the massive 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington to the November 5th and December 15th rallies at the Capitol, citizens have shown time and time again that they will not stand for this government intrusion into their lives. Leading Democrats have said that they are willing to lose Democrat seats in 2010 by forcing moderates to vote for this outrageously unpopular bill. We will do everything we can to make sure your vote is well known in your state.  When your constituents go to the voting booth, they WILL hold you accountable. 

With skyrocketing unemployment rates and the national deficit reaching levels previously unimaginable, Americans deserve common sense solutions that lower costs without piling debt onto future generations. Unfortunately, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that in order to fund Senator Reid’s bill, the federal government would have to spend nearly $1 trillion over the next ten years. Historically, such attempts to estimate the price of government programs have fallen woefully short of the actual cost of legislation. For example, in 1967 House Ways and Means analysts estimated Medicare would cost $12 billion in 1990. They were wrong—by a staggering factor of 10. The actual spending in 1990 was $110 billion.  Are you about to vote on a $10 trillion bill? 

To pay for this colossal reform bill, this legislation saddles hundreds of billions of dollars in crippling new taxes upon the American people and includes major cuts in Medicare for seniors.  Worse still, the bill includes a federal mandate on health insurance which would dramatically alter the relationship between the government and individuals. Under such a mandate, citizens will be forced—at times against their will—to purchase insurance simply because they exist. Granting Congress the authority to mandate the purchase of any product abandons all limitations placed upon federal power. A mandate on insurance will fundamentally change our great nation. America will cease to be a country made up of free people who choose their own destiny and will instead become a country in which the government controls the destiny of individuals. This takes us down the road to serfdom. Such a shift is unacceptable, unconscionable and a complete perversion of our liberties.

We will DOUBLE WEIGHT your CLOTURE votes and your FINAL PASSAGE vote, if they occur, as KEY VOTES when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2009. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

Sincerely,

Matt Kibbe
President and CEO

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