Stimulus Bill Wins Final Approval from Senate

Congressional staffers have been inundated with calls, emails, and faxes by Americans responding to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as the Stimulus Bill. The voters contacting Washington, DC have voiced clearly that they are against this bill for the past two weeks. Congressman Dr Broun of Georgia left Washington, DC Friday evening and caught a flight home. Once he landed at the Atlanta airport, the Congressman called into the Dontgo Movement radio program on the Heading Right Station of Blog Talk Radio. During his conversation with host Willie Lawson, Congressman Broun shared a conversation he had with a lobbyist in his office earlier that day. The Lobbyist had just left the office of a fellow Democrat Congressman. During his visit in that office the staffers had admitted that they had received a high volume of calls, and they were overwhelmingly against the Stimulus Bill. The Democrat Congressman staffer’s response was, “oh, they are just people.” “Can you imagine that?” Broun asked, “How arrogant is that? How elitist is that? Their just people. In other words, that’s the philosophy that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress have today, is that we’re just people. They know better what we need than we do. It’s an outrage, it’s absolutely an outrage.” During the same program, Congressman Shaddegg of Arizona shared details of the bill and frustration over the process involved in the writing of the bill. Shaddegg discussed in length the issue of $1.1 Billion allocated to do Comparative Effectiveness Research, which he described as “a massive study by the government to decide which medical procedures and treatments, and which prescription drugs the government will allow people who are on government paid for health care have and which medical procedures and treatments, or which prescription drugs the government will say, ‘No, I’m sorry. We don’t deem that to be worthwhile, so you don’t get that drug even though you and your doctor believe you desperately need it; or you don’t get that procedure even though you and your treating physician believe it may save your life.” Shaddegg went on to say that 63 different patient advocacy groups contacted Pelosi and expressed concern over this portion of the bill, asking her to take the language out, but she refused. Congressman Obey of Wisconsin put the language in the bill and claimed today on CSPAN that this language will be used exactly for the reason of deciding what patients are worthy of what treatments. Congressman Shaddegg also told the listening audience that his top legislative staffer, Ledge Director Travis, and his staff will be combing through the bill. Since the bill is over 1,000 pages long, and only released late Thursday night, the American people still do not know what is in this bill and “they deserve to know” Congressman Shaddegg said. He went on to urge people to call his office at (202) 225-3361 and encourage Travis to “go find pork”