[WCUSP] No Portland Reps support war funds cut off yet

[yvonne simmons]

Has anyone haerd of this of this legislation HR 4432
>proposed by Jim Mcgovern D Massachusetts. Yvonne.    
  Make It a Mandate for Peace
>       By John Nichols, The Nation
> 
> 
>       Peace and social justice groups have formed a
> new Mandate for Peace
> coalition to pressure incoming Democratic majorities
> in the House and Senate
> to use the power they will assume in January to
> promote the rapid withdrawal
> of US troops from Iraq.
> 
>       The coalition is a muscular one, comprised of
> more than three dozen
> national and regional organizations with strong
> track records on an array of
> issues. It takes in antiwar activist groups such as
> After Downing Street,
> Code Pink and Peace Action; internationalist groups
> such as Foreign Policy
> in Focus and Global Exchange; veterans groups such
> as Iraq Veterans Against
> the War and Veterans for Peace; religious groups
> such as American Muslim
> Voice, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Network of
> Spriritual Progressives and
> Pax Christi USA; civil rights groups such as the
> Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and
> the Women of Color Resource Center; and political
> groups such as True
> Majority, the Bankbone Project and Progressive
> Democrats of America.
> 
>       The coalition is supporting legislation
> proposed by US Representative
> Jim McGovern, D-Massachusetts, to cut off funding
> for the war. The McGovern
> bill, HR 4232, seeks to prohibit the further use of
> Defense Department funds
> to deploy United States Armed Forces to Iraq. Funds
> could be used to pay for
> the safe and orderly withdrawal of all troops;
> consultations with other
> governments, NATO and the UN regarding international
> forces; and financial
> assistance and equipment to either Iraqi security
> forces and/or
> international forces.
> 
>       Support for the McGovern measure is growing
> rapidly. Almost all of its
> 18 co-sponsors (Arizona's Raul Grijalva;
> California's Sam Farr, Barbara Lee,
> Pete Stark, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey;
> Illinois's Jan Schakowsky;
> Massachusetts's Barney Frank; Michigan's John
> Conyers and Carolyn
> Kilpatrick; New Jersey's Donald Payne; New York's
> Jose Serrano, Edolphus
> Towns and Nydia Velazquez; Ohio's Dennis Kucinich;
> Pennsylvania's Chaka
> Fattah; and Washington's Jim McDermott) have added
> their support in recent
> weeks.
> 
>       As such, HR 4232 now represents the closest
> thing to an exit strategy
> currently being entertained by members of Congress.
> 
>       Unfortunately, HR 4232 is off the radar for
> most members--even those
> elected on antiwar platforms. To put this serious
> alternative to the Bush
> Administration's stay-the-course position and the
> expected alter-the-course
> position of the Baker-Hamilton commission on the
> radar, supporters of the
> Mandate for Peace coalition will be flooding
> Congress with calls today, as
> part of a grassroots intervention on the eve of a
> planned meeting Tuesday of
> House Democrats to discuss Iraq policy and the
> release Wednesday of the
> much-anticipated report of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq
> Study Group.
> 
>       There will be more than enough
> inside-the-Beltway pressure on House
> Democrats to embrace the tepid proposals of the
> Baker-Hamilton commission as
> the only alternative to White House intransigence.
> The Mandate for Peace
> coalition wants to counter that pressure with a
> grassroots message that
> says: "The Constitution gives Congress the power to
> end this war by cutting
> off the funding, as well as the power to investigate
> the war's
> justifications and to impeach its architects. Let
> Congress know that
> forgetting the message of the November 7 elections
> is an option that we're
> taking off the table!"
> 
>       The coalition is urging Americans to call the
> Capitol Switchboard at
> (202) 224-3121 today to deliver an antiwar message
> to members of the House
> and Senate. (To get direct phone and fax numbers for
> your Representatives,
> visit www.usalone.com.)
> 
>       The November 7 elections sent an antiwar
> signal, as confirmed not
> merely by Democratic victories but by exit polling
> and post-election
> surveys. It was a mandate for peace. Every new
> member of the House and
> Senate who was elected--from Ohio Senator-elect
> Sherrod Brown to Minnesota
> Representative-elect Keith Ellison to Montana
> Senator-elect Jon Tester to
> Wisconsin Representative-elect Steve Kagen--ran and
> won by taking more
> clearly antiwar positions than their Republican
> foes. Predictably, the
> mandate of the people is under assault by the
> Washington establishment. It's
> time for the American people to repeat their
> message--loudly--at the start
> of a week when members of Congress are going to need
> to be reminded that
> they were sent to Washington not to better manage an
> illegal and immoral war
> but to end it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 



 
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