By Roy Beck, Director NumbersUSA: Thanks to all of you who have already responded to our nearly two dozen separate fax and phone action alerts that we've sent out in various groupings since the Senate voted mid-day to reconsider the Kennedy/Bush amnesty bill (S. 1639). Some people have been discouraged by the vote today after working so hard to kill the amnesty outright. Please do not be disheartened. Sen. DeMint (R-SC) is truly right in claiming that the momentum is with us -- it just wasn't quite strong enough today. We did much better today than in a vote a month ago that was nearly identical in its procedural purpose. Then as now, Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) brought up a cloture vote to violate Senate procedures and bring the Kennedy/Bush amnesty bill to the floor for a vote without going through a committee. You were able to persuade only 23 Senators to vote NO in May. Today, you got 35! That's a lot of progress in just a month. We only missed killing the Kennedy/Bush amnesty outright by 5 votes today, and those 5 seem within reach. It takes 60 Senators to pass a cloture vote. The amnesty people got 64 votes today. If you switch just 5 of them, we kill the bill. It looks like we have at least 8 Senators who voted YES for the amnesty today who are saying privately that they don't like the bill and are leaning toward voting NO on the Thursday cloture vote. If you can talk 5 of those 8 (or any of the rest of the 64) into switching to NO on Thursday and persuade the 35 NO votes from today to hold, we will kill the bill.
ONE THOUSAND ACTIVISTS IN EACH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT!
We issued this statement to the news media this afternoon: The insistence of Bush, Kennedy, Reid, McConnell and Lott to ignore the American people and revive this amnesty bill is causing frustration and anger in the grassroots. The American people are eager to express their displeasure over amnesty, and we at NumbersUSA see this in an accelerated and booming membership growth: This afternoon we have reached a new milestone of an average of 1,000 ACTIVIST members per congressional district -- 435,000 activist members (with a total email membership list of more than 1.5 million). We are disappointed that more Senators didn't understand that there is nothing at all that can be gained by further debating this bill under a sham amendment process. Nonetheless, we are heartened by the continuing momentum toward killing this bill later this week.
Amazingly, about 125,000 have registered on NumbersUSA and begun faxing and phoning Congress ONLY SINCE MAY 1! Now, each U.S. Representative must answer to 1,000 activists in the District, on average, and each Senator must answer to more than 8,000 activists in the average state. That's enough to make a difference if we all keep doing our part. (By the way, newcomers, about 2,000 of your fellow faxers have been fighting this battle with NumbersUSA since before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. If they've stuck with it for six years, I know the rest of you can stick with it more than six weeks.)
EXAMPLE OF WHERE OUR OPPORTUNITIES LIE
Sen. Bond (R-MO) was a big disappointment today in voting YES. But on Hannity tonight he called the bill a “june bug.” The longer people look at it and see it out there, the more they will hate it. He says that was the method to his madness today. Hannity accepted his explanation but said he still wished he would have killed the bill today, once and for all. Bond said the bill has a lot of problems but he voted for “debate” because he “loves” debating legislation and he hopes it improves with his amendment. He said Thursday’s cloture vote and the budget Point of Order are the key votes, not today's cloture vote. He said the more “sunshine” shown on this bill, the better off. That’s why he voted to allow the bill to proceed.
We are hearing some of this same kind of talk out of a number of Senate offices today. They talk of respecting the institution of the Senate and not standing in the way of debate. Also, they talk of respecting their colleagues who are begging them to at least allow the debate to occur. Actually, I also have a lot of respect for that point of view. But our argument was that the Senate and the public has been disrespected by the whole way this bill has been handled and the bill was not deserving of debate. Nonetheless, you can see that there is room for you to move many of these Senators.
ARRA Editor: If you are not yet involved with the above proactive team and you are frustrated with government's actions concerning immigration in any way, shape or form, go to NumbersUSA.com and join the team and become active right from your home computer!
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