Folks,

I
respect the work that MoveOn does, so I had to respond to their request and
forward this to my list. They have prepared an ad critical of the Medicare bill
that was pushed through Congress (with bribes and a shoehorn and a very
long lever) at the end of December.

–C

—–Original Message—–
From: Eli Pariser, MoveOn Voter Fund
[mailto:moveon-help@list.moveon.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:19 AM
Subject: The State of the Union in 30 Seconds

Dear MoveOn
member,

A year ago, President Bush
told the nation that “The British government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” It
wasn’t true, of course, but it did serve as a critical piece of the spin
campaign that led the country into war.

Tonight, in preparation for
the upcoming election, the President is again getting ready to tell the nation
something that simply isn’t true. According to news reports, the President will
declare victory in the fight to provide the nation’s elderly and disabled with
health care. He’ll point to the Medicare bill that he and Congressional
Republicans pushed through Congress. But there’s one small problem: the
Medicare bill won’t help Medicare, and it won’t help seniors. In fact, it’s
designed to do the program in.

That’s why we’ve prepared a
30-second alternative version of tonight’s speech which exposes how the
nation’s drug companies backed and bought this bill. We’ve asked one of the
country’s most respected polling firms to test the ad, and we know it makes an
enormous impact on the people who see it. But we’ll need your help to get it
out there. If you can help us reach our $10 million goal, we’ll put up a $1.7
million buy and make sure millions of Americans in swing states know the real
deal.

You can watch the ad and
contribute by credit card or check at:
https://www.moveonvoterfund.org/donate/sotu.html?id=2275-3402348-.32IOa7fkWAQll2OQok7mg

As the ad opens, we see a
series of photos from previous State of the Union addresses, cut quickly
together to resemble a movie. We hear the voice of someone who sounds like
George Bush. “My fellow Americans,” he says, “My Medicare bill
has real drug benefits…but not for you. For my contributors at the big drug
companies. My bill actually forbids Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices…so
you’ll probably have to pay more for your prescriptions than you do now; and
you won’t be able to get cheaper prescriptions from Canada.”

One thing that President
Bush probably won’t mention in his speech tonight is how the bill came to pass.
In the House, the vote was extremely tight: even some Republicans knew they
couldn’t justify the bill to their home districts. So, House Leaders held the
vote open for three hours in the dead of night while they twisted the arms of
the last few hold-outs. Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI), a retiring Congressman whose
son will run for his seat, was one of them. Here’s how the Associated Press
reported the events that followed:

“On the House floor,
[Rep.] Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in
return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House
members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After
Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, [Rep.] Duke Cunningham of California
and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.”

Bribing House members on
the House floor is, of course, a felony, and Rep. Smith has confirmed that this
account is accurate. No special investigation has been launched. The bribers
are still at large.

The story, in the end, is
pretty simple: drug companies and insurance companies gave millions of dollars
to push through legislation. The bill will greatly increase their profits while
pulling the rug out from under our seniors. President Bush is trying to spin that
huge sell-out as a benefit to the American people. And we won’t let him.

Sincerely,
–Adam, Carrie, Eli, James, Joan, Laura, Noah, Peter, Wes, and Zack
  The MoveOn.org Team
  January 20th, 2003

P.S. We’ve added a few
resources below that give more details on the Medicare sell-out and tonight’s
speech in general.

The Campaign for America’s
Future’s Medicare Fact Sheet:
http://www.moveonvoterfund.org/ourfuture-medicare.html

Rep. Sherrod Brown’s
editorial on the Medicare arm-twisting:
http://www.moveon.org/r?481

Leaders Nancy Pelosi and
Tom Daschle’s State of the Union Pre-Buttal:
http://democrats.senate.gov/%7Edpc/releases/2004116B38.html

The Center for American
Progress’s “State of the Union Viewer’s Guide”:
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=22520