Local News: Organizing for America in Waco Pushes for Health Care Reform

Obama Supporters Working Phone Bank in Waco to Push Health Care Reform
By Michael W. Shapiro (Tribune-Herald staff writer)

From the Waco Tribune-Herald

Almost a year after President Barack Obama’s election, some of the volunteers who worked in Waco to put him in office are regrouping in the hopes of building support for the administration’s top domestic priority — health care reform.

For the past two weeks in a small office at Columbus Avenue and North 10th Street, one paid employee and a group of volunteers have been calling members of the community to talk about health care.

The group, Waco’s branch of Organizing for America, a political committee run by the Democratic National Committee, has been holding phone banks Tuesdays and Thursdays, which volunteer Jan Forney described as part advocacy and part education.

A roomful of volunteers on cell phones were engaged in conversation Tuesday afternoon, supplied with talking points listed on a large piece of paper on the wall about reform proposals, the Obama administration’s position and the existing state of health care in Texas.

The volunteers have been urging area residents on the phone to call their members of Congress — Rep. Chet Edwards and Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison — to support health care reform.

“It’s clear that the (2008) election was one piece of it, but it wasn’t the whole picture,” said Forney, who worked for the Obama campaign last year.

“It’s an effort to really piggyback on the momentum we had during the election.”

During the summer as Congress went on recess, conservative groups and Tea Party groups, including Waco’s chapter, pushed back against Democratic-led health care reform efforts. In town hall meetings across the country, members of Congress were met by sometimes raucous audiences that included sizable contingents of people who called reform efforts fiscally irresponsible.

Concerned about the fate of health care reform and by what he described as misinformation that was dominating what should have been a more objective debate, Ta-Wei Lin, 26 and a recent Baylor alumnus, decided to temporarily drop his plans to get a degree in public health to intern at the Waco Organizing for America office.

Lin said he’s motivated to do his part to reform health care before he delves into the field professionally, pointing to issues like insurance companies denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions as just one of the glaring problems with the U.S. system.

He said he’s particularly concerned with the tone of the debate, singling out the level of discourse at town halls over the summer.

“It’s an issue that’s become highly politicized, and I wish it wasn’t,” Lin said.

Republican County Party Chairman Chris DeCluitt is on the opposite side of the health care debate, though he echoed Lin’s calls for respectful discussions.

“There’s room for firm, calm debate,” DeCluitt said, “but the party is very concerned with reform and the potential dismantling of our entire health care system.”

If anything needs reforming, he said, it is Medicare and Medicaid, entitlement programs that both have been projected to grow dramatically in the coming decades.

Battle lines in Washington mirror the differences between local Republicans and Democrats in Waco, with politicians mostly aligning with their parties.

But Edwards, who has six Republicans lined up in a primary to unseat him, is so far an exception. Edwards’ spokesman, Josh Taylor, described the Waco Democrat as neutral on a Democratic health care bill that had not yet been unveiled late Wednesday but was set to be rolled out this morning.

That means for Forney and other volunteers at the Waco Organizing for America office, the mission becomes that much more clear, she said: “to let Rep. Edwards know there are people out there who care about health care reform.”

Published on Thursday, October 29, 2009