Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN-6) has made an unusual request: she wants ordinary citizens to make a "House call" on Congress, and specifically the House of Representatives, as it meets to vote on its 1990-page health-care "reform" proposal.

Essex County Conservative
ExaminerTerry Hurlbut

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN-6) has made an unusual request: she wants ordinary citizens to make a "House call" on Congress, and specifically the House of Representatives, as it meets to vote on its 1990-page health-care "reform" proposal.


The problem

Congresswoman Bachmann is one of the few people in the House that has any respect, or even concern, for the Constitution. In March she created a sensation when she demanded that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner provide the Constitutional authorization for several key elements of the Troubled Asset Rescue Plan, or "the big bailout."

Now her concern is about health-care reform, and for good reason. In this interview with Sean Hannity, she called the Democrats' proposal "the crown jewel of socialism":

That's bad enough. But the Democrats didn't even want the House Republicans to read the bill. So what did some of them do? They actually went to OpenCongress.org to read portions of the bill and even link to it on their official pages. Now it's a fine thing when our own legislators have to go outside of official legislative channels to read something that they're expected to vote on.

But all the reading in the world isn't going to make this any better. This bill would provide a means to regulate every aspect of people's lives. The proposed tax on fruit juices and soda pop was only the beginning. Now comes word that this bill would regulate automatic vending machines, requiring full nutrition-fact disclosure prior to any purchase. The National Automatic Merchandising Association takes this very seriously.

And to top it all: the Congressional Budget Office came out with an estimate that certain classes of Americans would pay $167 billion in fines rather than buy insurance coverage. A law that relies on its own violation for its financing is a law that, by definition, encourages lawlessness.
The solution

Rep. Bachmann has only one solution thus far: to have ordinary citizens come down to Washington, congregate on the West Lawn of the Capitol, and then fan out to all the House Office Buildings to track down their Representatives and raise their voices in protest. Everyone knows that about 1.8 million people crowded into Washington already, on September 12 of this year. But Rep. Bachmann wants people to do it again. It might not seem reasonable or even possible to get people from all over the country to drop everything and go to Washington on such short notice. But since she called for this "House call" less than a week ago, many people have responded. Americans for Prosperity has arranged for chartered buses to depart from four different States (New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Maryland) to carry protesters for Washington for this event.

This should be quite interesting, especially to see how great a crowd this draws--and what attitude the House takes toward this demonstration.