Domestic Weekly Update July 6, 2010

What amazed me was that I had no idea that anyone could meet with their representative or senator. . . . Doing it demystified a lot for me. It was so helpful when staffers prepared me for the meetings. I'm just thrilled by how things went. It feels so much more doable and manageable for me to be effective than I ever thought.

— Suzanne Whang, first time lobbying members of Congress at the RESULTS International Conference

Join Us for the July Joint National Conference Call this Saturday at 2:00 pm ET — Note the New Time!

Join us this Saturday, July 10 for the RESULTS National Conference Call. This month, we will have a joint Global and Domestic call. Because of this, the call will be at 2:00 pm ET this month. This call will give us the opportunity to hear all about the RESULTS International Conference, including shares from new and returning conference attendees. We will also get the latest legislative updates from both our Global and Domestic campaigns. For those who came to the conference, this is your chance to relive that exciting experience and for those of you who couldn’t make it to DC, hopefully it’ll give you incentive to come next year. We look forward to a great call with all of you.

TAKE ACTION: Coordinate and gather with your group this Saturday, July 10, for the joint national conference call at 2:00 pm ET. The call-in number is (888) 409-6709. Once connected to the operator, ask for the RESULTS National Conference call. Plan to call in no later than 1:55 pm ET to give time to the operator to connect you with the call.

Please note that we will return to our normal 12:30 pm ET Domestic national conference call time in August.

This Week’s Recess Is a Great Opportunity to Follow-up on Our Tax Policy Goals (July Action)

Congress went on recess last week with a full plate left to clear. They again failed to pass an extension of unemployment, financial reform is still pending, and work on the middle-class tax cuts (which would include provisions on the refundable tax credits we are pushing) has yet to begin. The latest rumors are that the House will begin working on a tax package this month, in the hopes of passing something before the August recess. However, some senators are saying that their work on tax provisions might have to wait until after the election. We must avoid this if at all possible. If Congress waits until the last minute to address these changes, it is more likely they will do something easy and short-sighted (e.g. extending all the tax cuts, including the costly cuts for the wealthy, for a year) or fail to act (e.g. the estate tax in 2009). Therefore, we need to push Congress to act now so that 2010 tax legislation is done in a deliberate, not rushed, manner.

This month, we want to build upon our work over the last few months, including our Lobby Day at the RESULTS International Conference, to see that our goals for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) are met and soon. Our July Action will help you do this. The July Action is all about follow-up. As we know and talk about repeatedly at RESULTS, follow-up is such an important part of our success. Requests made to members of Congress are always important but if they are few and far between, their impact diminishes greatly. It is only that regular contact and follow-up with members of Congress and their staff that make the difference. Remember, Congress gets thousands of correspondence each week so we have to make ourselves stand out from the clutter.

Furthermore, RESULTS knows that building relationships is the key to our long-term success. Building the political will to end poverty is a long-term project, with victories and setbacks along the way. But know that this is a process as much as a goal and we need to forge those key relationships that will be sustained over time. Regular contact and follow-up with stakeholders and decision-makers will make that happen.

This week is a great week to do that follow-up from the July Action. Members of Congress are back home all week. Use this opportunity to schedule a face-to-face meeting during this recess to follow up from your recent correspondence and meetings with them. If you cannot get a sit-down meeting, remember that many representatives and senators make public appearances during this time (it’s an election year, after all). Just this weekend, RESULTS Domestic Outreach Organizer Jos Linn got the chance to speak with his representative in Iowa face-to-face before a local July 4 parade. Jos went to the staging area, saw the congressman there, and spoke to him briefly about RESULTS issues. Be creative and take advantage of opportunities like this to put our issues front and center with your members of Congress.

TAKE ACTION: Take the July Action. Contact your representatives and senators and schedule a face-to-face meeting with them this week. Urge them to protect low-income workers and their families by making the 2009 changes to the EITC and CTC permanent. Be sure to use any stories or data from your VITA site visits in your conversations. You can find district-level data for EITC on the Brookings Institute’s website and you can find state level data on the CTC on the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) website. Our goals over the next month are:

HOUSE GOAL: We want at least ten confirmed direct conversations between representatives and House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI-12) and/or Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI-4) and at least twenty letters sent to Reps. Levin and Camp or staff to staff contacts between your MoC’s tax staff and House Ways and Means Committee staff.
SENATE GOAL: We want at least six confirmed direct conversations between senators and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and/or Ranking Members Charles Grassley (R-IA) and at last fifteen letters sent to Sens. Baucus and Grassley or staff to staff contacts between your MoC’s tax staff and Senate Finance Committee staff.

Help us meet these goals by contacting members of Congress to set up a meeting today. If you cannot talk to you representatives and senators in person, call their tax aides in Washington DC toll free at (800) 826-3688 to talk about the importance of these credits. The Action Sheet has some great tips on how to have a good conversation with these aides about out issues. You can find the names of the tax aides on our Elected Officials page of the RESULTS website. Thank you for joining in this important process. The louder and stronger our voice is, the more change we can create.

We thank Bread for the World for allowing us to use their toll free number for calls to Washington.

Mid-Year Campaign Review — Take the Tax Credit Quiz!

For months we have been pushing our Economic Opportunity Campaign, specifically our work on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC). Because working these issues month after month can sometimes seem tedious and complex, we thought we would inject a little fun into it as we pass the half way point of 2010.

TAKE ACTION: To help you refresh your recollection about the EITC and CTC and the key points you’ll want to make with members of Congress, take the Low-Income Tax Credit Quiz. See how well you do on the quiz. You can even make yourself look really smart by having your non-RESULTS friends take it and then compare answers. J

Answers to all the questions are on the bottom of the page. Just click on the question to jump down to the answer you want.

Give Us Feedback on the International Conference in Our Online Survey

Thank you again to everyone who attended the RESULTS International Conference last month and for those of you back home who supported those who did attend. To make sure that future conferences are as good as this one (and even better) we want your feedback on the 2010 conference. Please take a few minutes to complete our Online Survey about the 2010 RESULTS conference. Just like lobbying members of Congress, we cannot know what you want or don’t want at these events without your valuable input.

Also, if you were at the conference and attended any lobby meetings, please fill out our new Online Lobby Report Form. This information is very important in tracking our congressional meetings and progress on our legislative priorities. It only takes a few minutes to fill out and provides us a wealth of important information. Also, please use this form for any future lobby meetings in DC or back home in your state.

Finally, please visit our International Conference page for information about this year’s conference, including copies of our PowerPoint presentations on our campaigns, our Domestic legislative handbook, Domestic request letters, and pictures from the conference. Check out the page today.

And again, be sure to mark your calendar for our 2011 RESULTS International Conference, June 18–21, 2011 at the Four Points Sheraton in Washington DC!

Quick News

Secretary of Agriculture Testifies at Child Nutrition Hearing. The House Education and Labor Committee held its first hearing July 1 on the bipartisan child nutrition reauthorization bill, Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act of 2010. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack spoke and made a point to say that child nutrition reauthorization is the number one priority of his department. Secretary Vilsack spelled out the reasons why it is so important to President Obama: at stake are educational achievement, health care, national security, and our morals and values. The panel of experts that followed included the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), Mission Readiness (the retired military admirals and generals who are concerned about obesity in youth), Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Texas, and the chef community, who were all in favor of a strong bill. Only the spokesman from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation said that in a time of deficit, this bill is irresponsible. The committee is expected to continue its work on child nutrition after the July 4 recess. Do your part in helping reduce childhood hunger by urging your representatives and senators to include the full $10 billion increase (over ten years) for these important anti-hunger programs. Take our online action. You can also watch a webcast of the hearing at: http://edlabor.house.gov/hearings/.

Health Reform Provisions Starting to Kick In. We all know that many of the major reforms passed in March as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will not go into effect until 2014. However, some important parts of health reform have already begun. Last week, states began opening up insurance pools for hundreds of thousands of people with serious medical conditions who had previously been unable to get insurance, with federal money on the way to help with costs. Also, checks were sent out in June to seniors to help with prescription drug costs not covered by Medicare (the gradual closing of the “donut hole”). Also, coverage of children with pre-existing conditions and covering adult children until age 26 went into effect a few months ago. The rhetoric attacking reform is likely to get heated over the next few months as the fall elections approach. It is important to discern fact from fiction and let people know about the good things reform has already done and will do over the next decade. To bolster our allies in Congress who helped pass reform, send a note to them thanking them again for their courage and determination to enact health reform this year.

Announcements

New Outreach Action Now Available. If you are attending or tabling at an event soon, please be sure to take a copy of our July Outreach Action to pass out. Our Outreach Actions are one-page actions that you can print off and distribute to others urging them to take action on our issues. You can find all our current Outreach Actions on our website.

Upcoming Events

(Click to see a complete calendar)

July 5–9: Congressional recess (Independence Day holiday).

July 10: Joint Domestic/Global RESULTS National Conference Call, 2:00 pm ET.

August 9–September 10: Congressional summer recess.

August 14: RESULTS Domestic National Conference Call, 12:30 pm ET.

RESULTS Contact Information

Main Office: (p) (202) 783-7100, (f) (202) 783-2818, 750 First Street NE, Suite 1040, Washington DC 20002. If mailing a donation to our DC office, please address the envelope to the attention of Cynthia Stancil.

Domestic Legislative and Grassroots Support Staff: Meredith Dodson, (202) 783-7100, x.116 (dodson@results.org); Jos Linn, (515) 288-3622 (jlinn@results.org).

The RESULTS Domestic Update is sent out every Tuesday over e-mail to RESULTS volunteers and allies all over the country. The purpose of these updates is to inform and activate RESULTS activists to take action on our domestic campaigns.

RESULTS - The Power to End Poverty