Organizing For Action (OFA) Holds Economic Issues Day of Action in Barrington

On Wednesday, more than 20 members of Organizing for Action (OFA) rallied outside the Barrington office of U.S. Representative Peter Roskam (R-6th) to call on Congress to support a better bargain for the middle class and grow the economy from the middle out. The event was co-hosted by the Northwest Suburbs and Lake/McHenry OFA Chapters.

The House of Representatives has voted to shut down the Federal government unless the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is defunded. The purpose of the event was to demand that Congress fully fund our government with a complete budget, not a piecemeal one. As President Obama recently stated, “The most basic Constitutional duty Congress has is to pass a budget.”

The group assembled at Barrington Memorial Park and then marched one block to Representative Roskam’s Barrington office to share how shutting down the government will have dire consequences for our country and its citizens.

Nick Burke of Fox Lake, a CPA and one of the organizers of the event, spoke about the economic consequences to the US and world economy of shutting down the Federal government. "It's up to us to make sure our members of Congress know that we've had enough already. We didn't send our elected officials to Washington to engage in political grandstanding that threatens to reverse progress and sabotage our economy."

Bill Davis of Arlington Heights said that repealing or defunding health care reform would be counterproductive. "The most extreme right-wing Republicans have put the Citizens in the middle being left with either defunding Obamacare -- which would deprive tens of millions of people of health insurance -- or a shutdown of the Federal government and the resulting chaos it will bring to the economy. No other choices. I am angry that they would hold hard-working citizens hostage!"

Christine Johanson Ross of Buffalo Grove, the health care issue team lead for Northwest Suburbs OFA, introduced Jan Wolf, a Barrington nurse. Wolf told about an uninsured farmer from the Barrington area whose could not afford the treatment and who died of a treatable medical condition and a waitress who could not afford lifesaving heart medications. Another woman who suffers from a chronic condition said she would not have been able to afford medical care. Thanks to Obamacare, she was covered on her parents' insurance until she was 26. Then, insurance companies could not reject her based on a pre-existing condition because the ACA prohibits them from doing so.