(UTU National Legislative Office Letterhead not reproduced)

TO: All concerned

FROM: James M. Brunkenhoefer

Now that we have a few moments in the middle of our chaos here in Washington, D.C., I wanted to update you on the events involving Railroad Retirement legislation.

We are doing all we can to try to breathe life back into the provisions of H.R. 4844. Because of the circumstances, we are not optimistic.

H.R. 4844 (The Railroad Retirement and Survivors' Improvement Act of 2000) passed the House of Representatives with almost 400 votes. We have a letter signed by more than 80 senators, including all the Democrats and a majority of the Republicans, supporting this legislation. And yet the Republicans want to blame the White House for the legislation's stall. There are more than enough votes to pass this legislation if the Republican majority would schedule a vote. However, the legislation has been blocked because of the threat of a filibuster from Sen. Gramm, Sen. Domenici and Sen. Nickles.

The reason that these Republican senators were able to kill this legislation was because of the limited time that was left in the session and the fact that they were able to use the Senate rules and tradition to their advantage. The reason there was so little time left in this session was because of the delays that we suffered along the way, but more on that on another day.

We cannot tell you what is going to happen next. That is because the U.S. Congress, under the leadership of the Republican Party, does not know exactly what it will do from one day to the next. This is the longest any of us have seen Congress stay in session during an election year.

If there is a lame duck session, and if there is legislation positioned that we could attach our legislation onto, we may ask you once again to contact and visit with your lawmakers. You have done so much already. We have gone much further than many people believed that we could. Don't forget, many said this legislation was dead before we started. We do not want to give you false hope and we do not want to call on you to do something that has no chance to change the situation. We will provide more information later as to exactly what happened and who did it. We will also provide you with our future game plan when we have more information. 

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