Ron Wyden: Legislating Through YouTube

If the White House can routinely get away with circumventing Congress -- why shouldn't a senator?

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is on the cutting edge of what could be a growing trend in building support for legislation. Instead of lobbying his colleagues to co-sponsor his universal health care bill, he's "YouTubing" them instead.

Wyden -- to whom one typically would not ascribe the word "edgy" -- has hired a public relations firm (with campaign money) to make a sophomorically funny video about his universal health care bill. (Highlights include an office worker taking his boss's slice of birthday cake, licking the icing off and handing it back to the birthday boss; and another scene of a guy reading the newspaper while photocopying his butt, many times over.)

Wyden hopes the video will jumpstart his bill's movement through the slothful Senate, where, done the old-fashioned way, it could take eons to raise enough public awareness to put pressure on the Senate to act.

"Getting a bipartisan group of senators together around a universal health care bill was pretty tough," says Wyden, who, so far, has gotten seven Democrats and seven Republicans to sign on. "Getting a bipartisan group of Senators to support a video of a guy copying his rear end may prove considerably easier."

View for yourself....