Dear MoveOn member,
On Monday, Paul Ryan unveiled the Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act—a proposal that tears away health care from tens of millions of Americans while benefitting the wealthiest Americans.
Passing this repeal bill is the GOP's top legislative priority. But momentum is not on their side. Thanks in part to overwhelming turnout at Town Halls during Resistance Recess, GOP leaders know that the longer the public has to debate this repeal bill, the harder it'll be to ram it through. So they're rushing Obamacare repeal to full House and Senate votes in the next 19 days.
Even in the unprecedented context of the Trump era, this rush is nuts. The Congressional Budget Office hasn't even had a chance to review it, so we don't know how much it will cost Americans—and members of Congress are being asked to vote before knowing how many of their own constituents will lose health care coverage.
The good news is: Some in the Republican Party are balking. Fueled by visible grassroots resistance to the Trump GOP agenda, the majority of Americans support the ACA.1 And we've been wildly successful in delaying health care repeal so far. Republicans had initially aimed for repeal before Trump was even sworn in. The more time passes, the lower the odds of repeal.
All of this means that we may be able to save health care for tens of millions of Americans—and stop the GOP's top priority in the next 19 days. But it won't be easy. It's become clear that MoveOn members will need to play a key leadership role in this fight to win.
No matter what, we will fight to defeat this bill—alongside our other priorities—for as long as it takes. But we need to decide as a community: Should MoveOn launch a massive all-hands-on-deck operation to save health care?
If so, we will pull out all the stops and do every smart, strategic tactic that we can to win.
It means rearranging staff, raising substantial resources, going deep at the state level, finding ways that MoveOn members from coast to coast can help sway on-the-fence lawmakers, flooding key Senators with calls every single day, showing up in person again and again, and more.
Should MoveOn make saving health care reform our top priority for the rest of this month—and launch an emergency, all-hands-on-deck effort to save the Affordable Care Act?
No, MoveOn shouldn't do that (and tell us why.)
Note: Your vote must be received by 7:59am E.T. on Friday, March 10 to be counted. Only your first click will be recorded, so please take care in making your choice.
MoveOn has already been fighting this repeal for months. Our actions outside Senate offices, which began in December—and our flood of calls and other actions—helped stall Republican plans to have a repeal bill on Trump's desk on Day 1.
Our continued pressure, weekly actions, constant calls, hard hitting videos, and most recently hundreds of events over Resistance Recess have driven wedges into the fractures among Republicans on repeal while shoring up Democrats. Republicans have already missed their own deadline for repeal multiple times in part because of the work of MoveOn members.
That's why they are panicking. If MoveOn were to go all in, here's what that would look like:
- Making this our top campaign for the next 19 days—and focusing our members' grassroots energy at this issue to confront members of Congress in their home districts and at hearings in DC.
- Investing in a series of ads with the health care stories of constituents whose lives and livelihoods were saved by the ACA, and earning media coverage for those stories in members' of Congress home states and districts.
- Doubling the number of calls that key members of Congress are getting at home and in DC—to leave no doubt how their constituents feel about this repeal bill.
- Rolling out media grabbing tactics and visuals, focused on the regular Americans who will lose out and the billionaires and corporations who will win under this bill, to drive headlines in national and local press.
- Showing up at key congressional offices across America. During the recent Resistance Recess, so many MoveOn members (including perhaps you!) made many Republicans think twice about repeal. Now, we must keep at it until they vote, by showing up in person.
- Pressuring Republican governors who support Medicaid expansion to make their voices heard in Washington. Because when Republican governors speak out, Republican lawmakers listen.
- Making it clear to vulnerable Republicans that if they vote for repeal, they will lose their seats. That starts with investing in Jon Ossoff's upcoming special election in Georgia—the first referendum on taking health care away from millions of Americans.
- Raising emergency funds to cover our unexpected expenses.
- And more. This is just the beginning; we'll leverage the creativity of MoveOn members and MoveOn staff to come up with new ideas every day.
Should MoveOn make saving health care reform its top priority, and launch an emergency, all-hands-on-deck push to save the Affordable Care Act?
No, MoveOn shouldn't do that (and tell us why.)
Note: Your vote must be received by 7:59am E.T. on Friday, March 10 to be counted. Only your first click will be recorded, so please take care in making your choice.
To be clear, MoveOn will fight the Republican effort to take away health care no matter what. And no matter what we do, we could still lose. But we believe a massive, all-hands-on-deck push gives us our best chance to win, and that there is a path to victory, if we make extra investments now.
MoveOn is its members—we consult our members for key strategic decisions in a variety of ways, and make sure our work is always member-centered. Launching this large of an effort, after a brutal election—and with so many competing priorities at the same time—isn't necessarily an easy choice.
Which is why it's important for MoveOn members to decide if we should go all-in: Should MoveOn make saving health care reform its top priority, and launch an emergency, all-hands-on-deck push to save the Affordable Care Act over the next 19 days?
No, MoveOn shouldn't do that (and tell us why.)
Note: Your vote must be received by 7:59am E.T. on Friday, March 10 to be counted. Only your first click will be recorded, so please take care in making your choice.
Thanks for all you do.
–Ben, Emma, Justin, Manny, and the rest of the team
Source:
1. "Support for 2010 health care law reaches new high," Pew Research Center, February 23, 2017
http://act.moveon.org/go/8812?t=8&akid=179375.10220574.leuIBT
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This email was sent to Eddie Alfaro on March 9th, 2017. To change your email address or update your contact info, click here. To remove yourself from this list, click here.
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