Friday, July 10, 2009

Quick update on energy bill timing

From MoveOn e-mail dd 7/9/2009
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Energy and health care are the two biggest issues on Capitol Hill right now, and MoveOn Councils are planning fantastic local actions this month urging their senators to support clean energy jobs and a public health insurance option.

And we just heard some news about the energy fight that we wanted to share. As you may know, we've been expecting a key vote on the big clean energy bill in the Senate Environment and Public Works committee by the end of this month.

Today, Senator Barbara Boxer—the Chairwoman of the key Senate committee now considering the big clean energy bill—announced that her committee won't vote on the bill until after the August recess.1

Actually, this doesn't change much for our summer organizing plans. The bill is still being written and debated now. And grassroots organizing to pressure key senators while the bill is in committee remains our best chance to fix it.

So we're moving ahead with our national day of action on July 23rd. That's when Councils working on health care and energy will hold media events all around the country to spread our message!

To check which actions are planned by our council please go to:
http://www.moveon.org/team/ and sign in

If you haven't joined a council yet you can check planned activities by searching for councils using your zip code

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Let's Celebrate & Plan for the Senate!

Let’s celebrate! ACES passed and MO can take a lot of credit for making that happen! More than 44 Representatives signed the letter to Speaker Pelosi, asking for the three amendments we wanted.

The JC-Hoboken Council was responsible for getting Rep. Rothman to sign it! Thank you Glenn for getting our meeting with his aide!

But the bill passed the House by only seven votes, and the Senate will be tough; we will also strategize what to do in August.

If you know anyone who would like to get involved, invite them to RSVP.

Next Thursday, July 9 @ 7PM we'll get together to celebrate and discuss the next steps. (at the moment we have not yet decided where we will meet, so check back at the link below for further details)

Here is the link to sign up for this brainstorming event:
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/hosts/index.html?event_id=94188&id=-10000761-HvxU2cx

Next steps for MoveOn Councils

Dear MoveOn Council member,
On Monday, we asked MoveOn members whether to move forward with a massive effort to fix the energy bill in the Senate—and a whopping 95% of them said yes! This is consistent with how Council members responded late last week.
Now, we wanted to give a special update about our next steps in the Power Up America campaign—and get your feedback on where we go from here.
Read on for more, then click here to a complete a survey about our next steps:
http://pol.moveon.org/powerup/nextsteps/councilsurvey.html?id=16489-8727613-YfczcQx&t=1
Here's what the landscape looks like in the Senate:
Just like in the House, conservative Democrats are already fighting hard to make sure the big energy bill protects the interests of Big Oil and Coal. In fact, they're pushing to weaken the legislation even more than their colleagues in the House already did.
In the next few weeks, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will take up work on their own version of the bill. Many members of the committee, including Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, are supporters of clean energy—but they'll be under tremendous pressure to preserve the worst provisions of the House bill.
One big thing that's at stake: The version of the bill passed in the House would repeal a key Clean Air Act provision and prevent the EPA from cleaning up global-warming pollution from dirty coal plants. So we'll be asking Chairwoman Boxer and the committee to pass a bill which doesn't have that problem.
Meanwhile, the fight over health care—MoveOn's other big campaign right now—is also heating up in the Senate. And it's a similar story—some conservative Democrats seem to be siding with the health insurance industry and trying to scrap President Obama's proposal for a public health insurance option.
So we face some critical questions: How can Councils be most effective moving into the big Senate fight on energy? And should Councils also begin working on health care?
To plan our next steps, we need to hear from you. (If you responded to our email last week, thank you! And we'd love to hear more from you now.) Click here to take an important survey to guide our next steps on energy and health care:
http://pol.moveon.org/powerup/nextsteps/councilsurvey.html?id=16489-8727613-YfczcQx&t=2
And as always, thanks for all you do.