This week my daughter is learning the 23rd Psalm to recite at a talent competition; you know, the famous one that begins, “The Lord is my Shepherd…” The thesis of that poetry is contentment despite circumstances.
With the news that Congressman Ron Paul has disavowed the written promise we received that he’d sponsor the bill, it’s easy to get discouraged. But, like the Psalmist, I feel like I’m in the green grass. Actually, that’s an understatement, I’m quite excited.
Before you write me off as insane, please read on…
For one thing, today, January 6, 2006, we’re in exactly the same place we were on December 6, 2005. We didn’t have a sponsor for the Read the Bills Act then. We don’t now.
Actually, that’s not even completely accurate. On that day, we didn’t have any legal work done on a bill to stop Congress from “delegating” their authority to the Executive Branch bureaucracy. So in that respect, we are actually farther along because we’re busily preparing the “No REGULATION Without Representation Act.”
Plus, on December 6th, I wasn’t expecting a sponsor. Congressman Paul’s letter was pure serendipity as far as I was concerned. Why?
Well, because we knew that a great deal more needed to be done. What we’re suggesting – that Congress must slow down and read every one of the bills they want to pass – is very difficult for Congress to swallow. And the only way we’re going to get them to swallow it is to apply “inescapable pressure.”
I have, from the outset, believed we’d have to do more than send 24,000 messages to Congress via our Electronic Lobbying System. I’m not sure exactly how high the number needs to be, but I was pretty sure it was higher than that. Moreover, I felt we were going to need to do more than send messages. That was an important first step and an important continuing tactic, but we aren’t going to achieve something this revolutionary without additional tools.
For another thing, we have big plans that we’ll be sharing with you later this month. We’ve figured out a method that we think has the potential to guarantee a sponsor. That’s a strange sentence. We’re not ready to get into the “the details” today, but let me break it down.
We are going to launch a plan that breaks our work into highly believable, easily achievable, bite size bits. The most important “bits” do not build sequentially, but simultaneously, meaning we could, potentially, reach our goal quite quickly. The cumulative affect of these bits is a very dramatic result – one Congress cannot and will not ignore.
Besides, no one man or woman was going to get RTBA passed. That might seem obvious, but the potential that we’d overlook the obvious is strong if we’re too disappointed to see it.
So I’m calm. While the Paul decision news was bad, it didn’t make me think I was “walking through the valley of the shadow of death.” We’re actually further along than we were before, and the best is yet to come.