Marion Berry: "We've got to elect Barack Obama"

Does Marion Berry really represent Arkansas' 1st Congressional District? He calls himself a Blue Dog (supposedly conservative) Democrat, but votes with ultra-liberal San Francisco House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi 90% of the time. He voted with Barack Obama to bailout Wall Street fat cats and with Obama on his budget-busting, $787 billion "porkulus" package and with the President on his proposed government-run health care! That doesn't really sound much like a conservative Democrat who represents Arkansas' 1st District. After all, 61% of voters in the 1st District didn't want Barack Hussein Obama's "Hope and Change." Even so, last year Berry told Arkansas' delegation to the Democratic National Convention "We must elect Barack Obama!

Even though the 1st District disagreed, Berry helped get Obama elected. And now we see the results of electing a community organizer with no executive experience, and a history of mingling with far left extremists.

Berry and his President have given us 10% unemployment, a $1.4 trillion deficit, and a national debt that hit $12 trillion and continues to climb. Congress is right now considering raising the debt ceiling to $14 trillion! That's $14 trillion to enslave your children and grandchildren for years to come.

2010 is the year to vote Berry out and get someone who will represent the 1st District.

If you agree, join the Boot Berry Roll Call and help spread the truth about Marion Berry to Arkansas' 1st District voters!

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

Was Marion Berry even awake during the August recess?

Originally posted on Boot Berry!

Apparently he wasn't awake enough to hear the tremendous uproar that emanated from virtually every town hall meeting across the nation, including those held in Arkansas.

Of course, he never held any town halls to listen to 1st District constituents. Not one time throughout the entire month of August was he present at one of the numerous events held across the state to give voice to concerned Arkansans who wanted to be heard. When we contacted his office to ask when the Congressman would give his constituents their say, we were told he had no town halls scheduled.

On August 22, Recess Rallies were held outside Berry's Jonesboro, Mountain Home, and Cabot offices in an effort to get across just how outraged his constituents are at the prospect of turning over our health care system to the federal government. The Congressman was invited to attend the Cabot rally, but declined. Hundreds of Arkansans gave up a beautiful Saturday to make their unresponsive, almost reclusive Representative understand just how deep the roots of their opposition to Obamacare run.

Other Arkansas elected officials began the month with no intention of listening to their constituents, but were convinced to change their tune by the rising level of opposition to socialized medicine in America. Representatives Vic Snyder and Mike Ross, along with Senator Blanche Lincoln changed their tunes to stand before some of their constituents at the very least. Though some of their town halls were tightly controlled, Berry's legislative branch colleagues did hear their constituents' concerns.

No one really knows where Blanche Lincoln stands at the moment (one day she said she wouldn't vote for a plan that included a government option, then the next day recanted), but Mike Ross admitted his constituents had convinced him they were overwhelmingly opposed to a government takeover and he unequivocally stated he would vote against any plan that contained such an option. Even Vic Snyder, who represents what is arguably the most liberal district in the state, was forced to concede that a public option wasn't essential to the bill. From the Arkansas News, "Snyder said he would not vote against a plan simply because it contained a public option, but he differs with those who see a public option as a necessity."

Berry's unwillingness to listen to his constituents apparently shielded him from the smelling salts that opened the eyes of his colleagues. According to Rick Crawford, the only announced Republican candidate for Berry's seat in 2010, "Just this last week, Congressman Berry said publicly that he is supportive of a public option on health care and it is not a deal breaker for him."

In response to President Obama's lie-laden address to Congress last week, Berry sent out a press release that demonstrates his inability to understand the concerns of his constituency. He attacks the free market system now in place. You know, the one that draws citizens of countries that have government-run systems when their nanny-state systems fail them. He fails to comprehend that Americans don't trust Congress to "fix" the system when he states, "We must have health insurance reform but we must work to find a fiscally responsible solution that preserves what works, fixes what doesn’t, and makes health care better and more affordable for all Americans."

When's the last time government interference made anything more affordable? When's the last time government intervention fixed anything? Government can take a good situation and make it bad, and it can take a bad situation and make it worse. The net cost of any government program always outweighs its benefits, and 1st District Arkansans understand this.

But Berry obviously has no plans to listen to those of us he supposedly works for, a strong majority of whom don't want Obama's government-run system determining our fate.