Where is Marion Berry?

from Boot Berry!

And why is his office not taking calls from concerned constituents today?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has scheduled a vote for 6:00 pm EST today! Not just any vote, but a vote on her 1,990 page "Government Takeover of the US Health Care System" bill, HR 3962. That's right. The bill that...

• Permits federal taxpayer funding of abortion services, above and beyond the status quo of current law.
• Provides for a "health care czar" called the Health Choices Commissioner, who could forcibly enroll individuals in government-run insurance and whose tasks include requiring random compliance audits on Americans' health benefits plans.
• Allows for "community organizations" like ACORN and Planned Parenthood to assist the Health Choices Commissioner in enrolling individuals in the Health Insurance Exchange.
• Encourages identity fraud for illegal immigrants seeking to gain taxpayer-subsidized health benefits through inadequate citizenship and legal status verification standards. Page 255, Section 345 of H.R. 3962 includes language requiring verification of income for individuals wishing to receive federal health care subsidies, and while the bill currently does include a requirement for applicants to verify their citizenship, it does not include a similar requirement to verify that person's identity, a key component of effective verification.
• Provides for 13 new and different tax increases, including an employer mandate excise tax.
• "Grandfathers" out of existence individual health insurance coverage.
• Retains the "death panels" by providing for bureaucrats working for a new comparative effectiveness institute funded by a tax on health benefits. The institute could publish the protocols needed to deny patients access to life-saving treatments on cost grounds.
• Contains NO ban on federal promotion of assisted suicide and/or health care rationing of treatments.
• Facilitates leftist, social engineering policies such as rewriting current tax law to allow domestic partners to be treated as "spouses."
• Retains both the individual and employer mandates to purchase health insurance or else face a financial penalty, and compliance to this mandate will be enforced by the IRS.
• Imposes a 2.5% tax on an individual's modified adjusted gross income if they fail to purchase "acceptable" health care coverage.
• Imposes a surtax, starting in 2011, on "high"-income people - that is, couples with adjusted gross income over $1 million and individuals over $500,000.
• Fails to hold Members of Congress to the same health care system requirements that Americans will have to live by under the public health insurance option.
• Prohibits states from using tort reform to reduce health care costs.
• Mandates that all health insurance companies accept all applicants, that they cannot deny anyone for pre-existing conditions, and that they cannot increase the monthly premiums for less healthy, more costly consumers.
• Accommodates "whistleblower" provisions for trial lawyers to bring suit against employers.
• Slashes Medicare payments to providers by more than $400 billion.
• Creates dozens of new bureaucracies (111 to be exact) including the Health Benefits Advisory Committee and the Health Choices Administration.
• Encourages people to drop their insurance in favor of the public option as it provides for underpaying medical providers, who will in turn jack up their rates for those patients who have private insurance, driving more people to the cheaper, government plan.
• Authorizes Medicare to pay doctors for providing advice to patients on end-of-life care.
• Grants the authority to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
• Considers individuals to be treated as "children" up to the age of 26 for the purpose of remaining on their parents' insurance plan.
• Imposes an excise tax on medical devices.
• Cuts $170 billion from the Medicare Advantage program.
• Institutes $729.5 billion in job-killing tax increases on all Americans, fines those who can't afford to purchase government-forced insurance, and cripples businesses by taxing health benefits.

And calls to Marion Berry's DC office [(202) 225-4076] are routed to a full voice mail box! His Jonesboro phone [(870) 972-4600]is answered by a machine that not only explains they're closed, but that they're gone for a 3 day weekend to celebrate Columbus Day! The number [(501) 843-3043] for his Cabot office is also off for a 3 day weekend! The message on his Mountain Home office phone [(870) 425-3510] informs callers it will be closed from November 9 until November 18.

Not one person is available to hear from you, me, us, or any one of his constituents concerned with his position on a bill that will not only affect us all, but our descendants for generations as well. And he's not available. His taxpayer funded staff is off for a 3 day weekend!

Is he there? Will he vote yea, nay, or present? Who knows?

You can still email him, but who knows if he'll listen. We get nothing more than a canned response to every question we've asked over the past several months.

Is this what you expect of your Representative? If not, if you expect your Representative to make himself available and to be more responsive to constituent concerns, then help us Boot Berry next year!

In the meantime, let him know how you feel when he and his staff decide to pick up the phones.

Washington, DC Office--(202) 225-4076

Jonesboro, AR Office--(870) 972-4600

Cabot, AR Office--(501) 843-3043

Mountain Home, AR Office--(870) 425-3510