It might be hard to believe, but our campaign for a budget that reflects America's priorities in 2007 is already underway.  Last year, our state affiliates got to work early, kicking off the successful national campaign to protect Social Security from privatization and benefit cuts right after the president announced his plan in the State of the Union.  This year is no different. 

In immediate response to the president's State of the Union address last week, USAction affiliates in Tennessee and New Mexico and ECAP in Minnesota held well-attended and well-covered events calling on Congress to reject the familiar formula of budget cuts to vital programs and tax breaks for millionaires.  President Bush's agenda is a familiar one; so is our strategy for defeating it.

We're keeping the pressure on for a budget that reflects America's priorities!

Last week, by a razor-thin margin of 216-214, the House passed the $39 billion budget-cut bill, slashing funding for health care, student loans, child support enforcement and other vital services. The following day, the Senate voted to proceed to conference with the House on a $70 billion tax-cut reconciliation bill.  As Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) observed, "I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending in December to help achieve deficit reductions, we can now turn around a short while later to provide tax cuts that exceed or cancel out the reduction in spending."

To get the vote this close, ECAP successfully convinced four Republican Members to change their vote -- Reps. John Sweeney of New York, Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, Jim Ramstad of Minnesota and Rob Simmons of Connecticut.  To make these changes, we did everything – thousands of phone calls, many editorials in local papers, leafleting at Members' churches, and visits, visits, visits. 

"We need to address wasteful and outdated programs and rein in the unnecessary growth in federal spending without unduly hurting the needy and vulnerable," Gerlach said in a statement, adding the bill "took some steps in that direction, but in my opinion needed much more work before it was passed."  An aide said Sweeney was concerned about a Senate-added provision that might allow hospitals to turn away some Medicaid patients for non-emergency care.

ECAP has changed the face of the annual fight over federal budget and tax policies.  We've done it by helping every organization involved find the right place for its strength and expertise.  We've done it by having a core group of 20 people who met almost every single morning for four months, even over holidays, to plot strategy and divide up work.  We've done it by building impressive unity around one of the most complex pieces of public policy in the nation, the federal budget.  We've done it with the amazing generosity of organizations and individuals.  As Mark Schmitt of the New America Foundation said on his blog, "A word here for the Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities, which has led this fight. When this project started, my reaction was doubtful. It shouldn't be an emergency campaign, I thought, it's a permanent campaign. But the creativity and the intensity they have brought to the fight, bringing grass-roots groups to members' offices and blocking every attempt to evade responsibility. Above all, they prevented individual interest groups from being bought off with improvements to their particular piece of the legislation, and kept the focus on the legislation as a whole. That doesn't seem like a big deal, but it had not been done effectively before…"

Below is the list of the ECAP participating groups.  Each of them deserves enormous thanks from all of us:

In his State of the Union address, the president made it clear that the need for ECAP is not going away: "I urge the Congress to act responsibly, and make the tax cuts permanent… This year, my budget will cut [discretionary programs] again… we will save the taxpayers another $14 billion next year… the rising cost of entitlements is a problem that is not going away."

And new Majority Leader Boehner has made similar comments – while promising corporate lobbyists that he will take care of them (Washington Post, 1/29/06, "Controversial Industries Have Backed Boehner," by Thomas B. Edsall).  "Two controversial industries -- for-profit colleges and trade schools, and private student lenders -- have been the major sources of financing for Rep. John A. Boehner's bid to become House majority leader. Boehner has been an outspoken advocate for each interest, and has used his chairmanship to push legislation that would boost profits by millions of dollars."

Here’s a graphic summary of ECAP's work over the past four months – doubtless under-counting much, but very impressive nonetheless.  We have much to do, but we know that we’re all in this together, and that we can have a government that fights for the rights and opportunities of all of us – if we fight effectively to get it.

Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities

Summary of Activities

• Over 690 Events organized in 46 states
• 200,000 calls to Congress generated
• Over 110 national and trade press hits
• An email list of 31,000 activists who signed up at www.actnow.org