Call your senator and tell them to vote NO on Republican's horrible cuts. The vote is tomorrow (Friday) morning. It can be blocked despite Schumer (see post body)
Call your senators, they can still block this despite Schumers push. The vote is tomorrow. If all republican vote for it, they need 7 dems. 8 with Rand Paul who has said he’ll vote no. (Republicans are not using reconciliation so it needs the the filibuster)
Many senate dems are publicly coming out against voting for cloture (meaning they won’t vote to let it get through the filibuster). As of what I last read, around 11 dems are thought to potentially vote to let it pass filibuster. Most of those are still not sure. We only need a handful more of those to become noes and it will get blocked. Some yeses have flipped to noes because of public pressure. We cannot let up now
House dems are publicly telling the senate not to do this (and it’s not just AOC on this - it’s quite a few of them). Earlier read that 7 Dem state AGs are saying the same. Federal worker unions are telling senate dems not do this. Keep the pressure up
House dems are pissed enough at senate dems right now that she actually might be able to move up. This is the ideal moment for outside leverage where people within the system are pissed off
What we're hearing: House Democrats' text chains lit up Thursday night with expressions of blinding anger, according to numerous lawmakers who described the conversations on the condition of anonymity.
"People are PISSED," one House Democrat told Axios in a text message.
Several members — including moderates — have begun voicing support for a primary challenge to Schumer, floating Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) as possible candidates, three House Democrats said.
One lawmaker even vowed at the House Democratic retreat to "write a check tonight" supporting Ocasio-Cortez, said the senior House Democrat
You've clearly never called your representative, for any reason. So please stop talking as if you know what you're taking about.
Representatives have staff. Those people take calls - any call, from anyone. They're taught and instructed to record constituents opinions on issues like this. You can call, and rant at them for a half hour, and what they're going to record is incrementing a "no on cloture" tick. When you call about these things, the easiest thing for everyone is to clearly state which issue you're calling about, and how you want them to vote, because that's all the staffer is going to record anyway. The representative gets a summary of how many people voiced opinions about which items of legislature.
There's even a formula: each phone call represents X thousand people who didn't bother to call but probably agree with the caller. Each email represents Y tens of people. It's based on how probable or hard it is to contact them.
Now, if you call your rep and want them to, say, work to get Iran to release your kid who went there on holiday and got themselves arrested, then things work a bit differently, and slowly. But the rep will still get the message.
These sorts of calls are statistics and absolutely influence your representatives. They're what balances the scales, on the other side is usually special interests and quid-pro-quo money that is illegal but it's never prosecuted because it's almost impossible to prove.
Voting, and this, is your civic duty. Even if your rep is of the other party - especially in these cases - it's important to call: you are a voice representing many voters who are too fucking lazy to dial their fucking cell phones, and representatives know this.
What you say is true for online petitions. There's no evidence these are anything more than email-gathering mechanisms for spam generators, our that they have any effect - but "calling your representative" is "calling your representative's staffers" and it makes a difference.
Call volume doesn’t indicate the opinion of the constituents, just that they called. I mean this with no disrespect, but if you have not looked around for a while you may have missed that very few politicians give a fuck about people think anymore