Season 2, Episode 1 — 22 June 2017

About this episode

Today’s episode is particularly urgent. The Senate released its bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut Medicaid this morning. Listen to it right away then get busy. TASH talks with Gonzalo Martínez de Vedia, a Policy Manager with The Indivisible Project, about what this bill means and how you can talk to your Senator — Republican or Democrat — to effectively convey the importance for people with disabilities of it not passing.

About the presenters

Gonzalo Martínez de Vedia is a contributor to The Indivisible Guide and Policy Manager with The Indivisible Project in Washington, D.C., where he helps demystify Congress for 6,000 Indivisible groups across every congressional district in the country. Previously, he advocated for the rights of workers, immigrants and survivors of human trafficking through several NGOs including the Worker Justice Center of New York, the Freedom Network, and Humanity United. Gonzalo was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds a BA cum laude from Cornell University.

Donald Taylor is responsible for membership and chapters at TASH and is the producer of Amplified.

Transcript

Announcer: You’re listening to TASH Amplified, a podcast that seeks to transform research and experience concerning inclusion and equity for people with disabilities into solutions people can use in their everyday lives.

Today we are talking with Gonzalo Martínez de Vedia, who is a Policy Manager with The Indivisible Project. Indivisible started as a 23-page guide on how to influence your congresspeople, written by former congressional staffers with first-hand experience of what works and what doesn’t work. The guide had been downloaded over 2 million times and Indivisible now comprises nearly 6,000 local groups. Their primary focus in recent weeks has been on preventing Congress from repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and cutting $800 billion from Medicaid — which they could do as early as next week. We talk with Gonzalo about what TASH members can do to protect these essential rights of people with disabilities.

Musical introduction

Complete transcript forthcoming

Donald Taylor: The American Health Care Act is really close to having the votes to pass in the Senate. So I think the idea is to look at specific [influenceable] Senators. Which Senators, and in which states, are the most important Congresspeople for citizens to try to influence?

Gonzalo Martínez de Vedia: Yeah, so there’s two answers to that.

You know, the first answer, of course, is we encourage people to call whoever their individual two senators happen to be in whatever state they are. And there is work to do in all in all states.

But as a national campaign, of course, we have to hone in on certain targets, especially now that we’re getting into the final stretch. You know, the House has already voted. We are now in the Senate and in we are in the final stretch of the Senate negotiations. And what the Republican caucus and leadership is trying to do as we speak is to coax and buy-off the very last couple of votes they need.

Now remember: in this particular case, they are going to use a Senate procedure known as reconciliation, so that they don’t have to meet their usual standard of having a filibuster-proof vote of sixty. They actually only are going to need fifty votes, plus Mike Pence to break the tie — if it happens to be a fifty or fifty-one votes — just to get it through without the help of the White House. And in order to get to that, they almost need every Senator in the chamber to vote — you know — every Senator in the Republican caucus to vote for the bill. So that means that they can not afford to lose more than two Senators. And there have been Senators out there within the Republican caucus that have shown deep reservations about moving forward with Trump care.

So either because of that, or because they happen to be in states that are most affected by the roll-back in health care that that that is in TrumpCare, or because they are up for reelection in the next cycle, we have honed in on ten states that include eleven senators and they are:

1. Susan Collins of Maine


2. Dean Heller of Nevada


3. Shelley Capito in West Virginia


4. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana


5. Rob Portman in Ohio


6. Tom Cotton in Arkansas


7. Cory Gardner in Colorado


8. Jeff Flake in Arizona


9. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania


10. and the two senators from Alaska: [Dan] Sullivan and [Lisa] Murkowski.

So, if we were able to peel off even three of those eleven, we’d be in great shape in making sure that this disastrous bill doesn’t get through.

Donald Taylor: So it’s great if you live in one of those districts, but all-too-many of us live in districts where our Congresspeople are already going to do the right thing. For example, my Senators are Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and my Representative is Donald Beyer. What can I do in a district where they’re already going to vote against the American Health Care Act?

Gonzalo Martínez de Vedia: You know, this is a very common question that we get. You know, there are 6,000 Indivisible groups, using the Indivisible strategy around the country right now. And they’re spread out in every congressional district in every state, so that means — yeah, absolutely — that plenty of folks tuning-in and wanting to do something about this policy are doing it from zip codes that are already sending folks that are on the right side of this particular fight on health care.

But I think what’s important to know about the Senate is that it doesn’t operate exactly the same way that the House operates. And what that means for Democrats is that they actually have a lot of tools at their disposal to slow down the process and draw more attention to what is in the bill. So what McConnell and the Republican caucus happen to be, you know, using as a strategy right now, this month, is to get everything done before July 4th so that they don’t really have to face their constituents and have an open and honest conversation about the way that TrumpCare would affect millions of Americans. So one way that Democrats can really, kind of put a hitch into that into that plan is to bring Senate business to a halt. You know, there are plenty of things that the Senate would like to be spending its time on — not the least of which are confirming all of the different nominations that Trump has put forward; they want to have sanctions for Russia; and they want to get to the bigger policy items of the budget, tax reform, infrastructure. So there is an inherent interest in the Senate to keep things moving along and get this bill through quickly. But if Democrats really want to pr