The Window is Closing
This week, S.3065, the Senate bill to repeal DADT, gained three more cosponsors with Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for a total of 32 in the Senate and 192 in the House of Representatives. These new cosponsors are a direct result of more than 400 people visiting Capitol Hill May 11 and lobbying their members of Congress – along with action alerts and concentrated efforts to bring them on board. The group was made up of veterans and active duty along with civilians – all traveling to Washington, DC, from 44 states to tell their stories and send an urgent message: Time is running out, and Congress needs to repeal DADT NOW.
Time is running out. Over the next two weeks, two extremely important votes will be taken up in Congress. One vote will be in the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), where Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will attach an amendment repealing DADT to the annual Defense Authorization bill. This vote in committee will make DADT repeal a part of the Defense bill at large, putting it alongside funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and a number of other key issues. For this vote to pass, Sen. Lieberman will need a majority of the SASC members to vote for repeal.
Find out if your senator is on the SASC by going here: http://armed-services.senate.gov/members.htm. If your senator is one of those listed, please call the Senate switchboard today at 202-224-3121 and tell your senator to stand with Sen. Lieberman and include repeal of DADT in this year’s Defense bill.
The second important vote will be in the House of Representatives, Congress’ other chamber. There, Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Penn.) will essentially do the same thing, adding an amendment to the House’s version of the Defense Authorization bill, the only difference being that every member of the House will vote on this amendment.
It is extremely important for you to call your representative. Go to https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml to find out who represents you. Call the House switchboard today at 202-225-3121 and urge your representative to vote for the Murphy amendment to repeal DADT.
As we approach these votes in just two weeks, we need to keep up the pressure on members of Congress – especially House leadership.
Everyone needs to call House leadership today. Urge Reps. Pelosi, Hoyer and Clyburn to schedule Rep. Murphy's vote to add a repeal amendment to the House’s version of the Defense Authorization bill.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
202-225-0100
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
202-225-3130
House Majority Whip James Clyburn
202-226-3210
The window of opportunity to finally end this unjust law is closing. Without your help it will slip away. If we don’t win these votes, it might be years down the road before we get this close to repeal again.
05-14-10 By Jeremy Wilson-Simerman, Legislative Manager |
1 Comments
Comments for this entry are closed.Bill on May 17, 2010 at 12.35 am
It would be nice to think those in the White House read these SLDN articles. If they do, then they know there is one citizen more than any other who should be making calls to Congressional leaders and selected Senators right now: our Commander-in-Chief. The President has made promises that he has not yet kept. Let’s hope he realizes writers of bills have the intelligence to craft legislation ending DADT in 2010 with cognizance of the upcoming findings of the DOD study for implementation. Let’s hope he realizes the time has come to end a law that discriminates against well over 60,000 servicepersons currently serving in our wars and insults up to 1 million living veterans. Let’s hope he has the wisdom to pick up the phone these next two weeks. Let’s hope he has the courage of his well stated convictions.