Congressional rules for franked mail bar Members from using taxpayer-funded mail for newsletters that use “partisan, politicized or personalized” comments to criticize legislation or policy.
The dispute over Brady’s chart is being reviewed by the franking commission, which must approve any mail before it can be sent. No decision had been made on the matter by press time.
Brady adamantly denied that the chart was misleading and said Democrats are simply threatened by the content of the graphic.
“I think their review was laughable,” Brady said. “It’s ... downright false in most of the cases. The chart depicts their health care plan as their committees developed it.”
“The chart reveals how their health care bureaucracy works, and people are frightened by it,” he added. “So this is their effort to try and discredit” the chart.
Republican Members have made 20 requests to mail a version of the chart to their constituents and have been told that the requests are being delayed while the commission reviews allegations that the chart is misleading.
...UPDATE: Congressman Carter's Twitter confirms this report in the blogosphere: The Democrats are blocking free speech in the House. We can not use the words "Democrats" or "Government Run Healthcare" in official mail.
The dispute centers on a chart (view PDF) created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan.
At first glance, Brady’s chart resembles a board game: a colorful collection of shapes and images with a web of lines connecting them.
But a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.
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I say let's show this "government of transparency" what happens when they try to block Republicans from showing us what's really going on. Please feel free to post/spread this on your own blog and/or email, complete with link to the PDF file. After the fiasco surrounding the DVD encryption key, the Democrats should know that you can't just hide things from the citizenry anymore.
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