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What Happened With The CRPA?
Dear Fellow Advocate-
Unite 2 Fight Paralysis
would like to thank you for your help in the last-minute onslaught on
Capitol Hill in support of the
Christopher Reeve Paralysis Act.
We accomplished what was said to be impossible. We won...and yet we
lost.
Ultimately, the CRPA did NOT achieve passage in the 109th
Congress.
Just a brief update:
The CRPA was revised and
approved by the House of Representatives
at 2:22 a.m. Saturday, December 9, approximately 24 hours before the
109th Congress adjourned forever. Getting this bill out of committee
and passed by the House in the lame-duck session may sound like a
small accomplishment. It was not. We were going against tremendous
odds and steep competition.
The bill was then sent on to the Senate, where it met with a
"secret hold". (Click
here
for more about "secret holds")
Reports of activities in the Senate
are murky and incomplete.
What we know: In the Senate, Senators Harkin, Kennedy and Reid
were determined to escort the CRPA to victory. With 34 co-sponsors,
had it gone to a vote it likely would have had majority support. Yet,
at approximately 6 a.m., THE BILL DIED. We have nothing but
unsubstantiated rumors about the reason. Time ran short. The CRPA was
not the only health-related bill to suffer this fate. One rumor that
seems likely: It was "held" by a Senator who believes "the Senate
should not micro-manage the NIH".
U2FP will pursue the answer to this mystery. We need to know what
happened to avoid this result in the future.
What Comes Next?
Paralysis advocates are no strangers to setbacks. If we accepted
defeat easily, we would never have made it as far as we have. The
Christopher Reeve Foundation has suggested that they may re-introduce
the CRPA in the 110th Congress. We hope they do. With the groundwork
already in place, we think it would succeed.
We encourage all advocates to:
1) Thank the House members you contacted last week,
2) Send thanks to Harkin, Kennedy and Reid for championing our
cause in the Senate,
3) Contact the
Christopher Reeve Foundation.
Let them know how important the CRPA is to you. Ask them to
re-introduce the CRPA in the 110th Congress.
Friends, politics is always a dicey business and frankly, a
secret hold in the lame-duck session seems like dirty pool. We will
persevere. We've all learned a lot these past 2 years. Unite 2 Fight
Paralysis thanks you for your help and commitment. We're so very
proud to have worked with you. We hope to do more of it in the future.
Please take pride in having come this far. We may not have won,
but we made an impression. We'll be back.
Gratefully,
Your Friends at
Unite 2 Fight Paralysis
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