Recess

I have yet to be fully briefed on all of the meetings I did not personally attend this week (I was in about one-quarter of our meetings), but what I have seen myself and what I have heard so far from others is very positive. Here’s a brief, preliminary overview:

Tax: In the 110th Congress (the two years from the Democrat’s take-over of control of Congress through Obama’s election to the White House), there was a Republican bill on the Senate side and a Democratic bill on the House side. I am hoping that both of those will be re-introduced shortly. If they are, we will need to generate support from the other party on each side (i.e., Democratic support in the Senate and Republican support in the House). As I have said before, our issues do not generally fall victim to a partisan divide, so we can usually get support from someone on each side of the aisle in each house of Congress on any given issue. We seem to be making progress doing exactly that on tax this year – we have identified possible Democratic supporters in the Senate and possible Republican supporters in the House.

Voting: I am less familiar with voting than with tax because I have focused primarily on tax this year, but can report that legislation has been introduced in the 111th Congress to pick up where we left off in the 110th and possibly go a little further. These are not the same bills from the same sponsors as in the 110th, which is a good sign that people are taking a close look at what was proposed in 2007-08 and updating their respective bills accordingly.

Representation: Our objective on representation over the past few years has been to increase the size of the Americans Abroad Caucus. Since we do not have our own delegation of Senators and Representatives to represent the 5-7 million of us (as, say, we South Carolinians have two Senators and six Representatives to represent the 4 million of us), one mechanism that we have for ensuring representation of our interests in Congress is this caucus. The Americans Abroad Caucus is made up of members of Congress who generally support our issues and want to give us a more effective voice in Congress. We won’t know until weeks or months after OAW how successful we have been in recruiting new members, but the feedback has been positive and we hope to have made progress.

Part of the OAW delegation is still in Washington doing one last day of meetings on Friday. The rest of us have already left, as has much of Congress since a two-week recess began after the budget was passed last night. I have a one-year recess that started at the same time -- I left Washington last night and came down to South Carolina for a quick two-day visit with my parents and siblings before heading back to Paris. Then in a few weeks I will be moving to Saudi Arabia, where I will be practicing law in Riyadh. I hope to remain very active in AARO and continue participating in OAW each year.

I’m looking forward to OAW 2010!

Photos

Here are some photos from OAW 2009:

OAW reception on Wednesday evening
Talking to Congressman Holt at the reception

OAW dynamic duo Don & Mary Adair Johnson
Eric Way of FAWCO
James Kigin posing with POTUS
OAW morning meeting

OAW delegates after briefing for Caucus staffers

Andy & Lucy Laederich of FAWCO at the morning planning meeting



OAW delegate James Kigin with Senator Klobuchar
(James, thanks again for the photos this year!)

Washington, State of Mind

Last year, I blogged about the Washington state of mind, which I think we can all agree (we can all agree on something, right?!), is very unique. Every year I notice something different and this year was no exception.

On the Metro, the train drivers announce the last stop in Virginia before you enter DC and the first stop in Virginia as you leave DC. Instead of saying “Virginia” or “the state of Virginia”, they say “the Commonwealth of Virginia.” After the third time I heard that it clicked with me – Metro drivers are trained to be history buffs/poli sci geeks, which is just so DC.

In the Metro, the farecards usually have a background image you hardly even notice, like a picture of a panda at the National Zoo. Now things have changed – the image on one of the cards I got this year was of Barack Obama. As far as I know, this is the first time a president (or even a human) has been on a Metro card, so it was presumably politically motivated. Can I get a discounted card with George Bush on it? I didn’t ask.

Change

Given the radical changes in Washington and the dramatic times we’re living in, I wondered what the environment would be like this year in Washington. What I’ve seen is a combination of excitement about a fresh start and a certain amount of trepidation in the face of the almost unprecedented economic challenges currently facing the government.

One interesting facet of the excitement is the fact that it is not limited to the Democrats. Of course, the Democrats are thrilled to be in control of both Congress and the White House and see almost endless possibilities of legislative change on all fronts. But at the same time, some Republicans feel somewhat relieved to be back in the minority, for at least three reasons: first, it gives them a chance to unify the party behind the core principles that they feel define them; second, it puts them back on the offense, where they can challenge the majority and not lose focus defending their president’s policies and third, it gives them a break from being associated with a President whose popularity had sunken to historically low levels. Now they can refocus, start over and attack.

For our purposes, these partisan divides are of academic interest, but do not affect our issues very much. Our success or failure on our positions on taxation, voting and representation do not turn on partisan winds, but on the commitment of specific individuals. We find that once we have established a certain relationship with a particular member of Congress, partisan issues are largely irrelevant. Once people hear and really understand our issues, they have little hesitation in accepting our positions. Either they are interested or they are not, but they are rarely directly opposed to us. Being able to cross the partisan divide and have that sort of support on both sides of the aisle allows us to continue to move our agenda forward, regardless of who is in charge.

The Ask

We are now two days into OAW 2009 and have been having some great meetings.

One in particular stands out.

When we make the rounds on the Hill, we see a certain local or regional distinctiveness in many of the offices we visit. Sometimes it's just the photos and plaques on the walls, sometimes it's handouts of local products from the district (usually snack food -- peanuts, etc.), but sometimes it's a cultural difference you see in the people you are meeting with. There is no better example of that than the office of a member of Congress representing New York that we saw on Monday.

We sat down with this staffer and immediately experienced that exaggerated stereotype of direct, blunt and frank New York-ness. You would recognize this from the movies, except that he wasn't a fully-armed member of the mafia (that I know of), and his violence towards us wasn't physical, but purely verbal.

The staffer stopped us in our tracks as we were explaining a particular issue and demanded to know what our "ask" was. In other words, "we understand your problem, but what do you want us to do about it?"

This is a simple and obvious question, but the answer isn't always so easy. Some offices are the right place to talk to about introducing a bill into a particular committee, some for making a phone call to open some other important door for you, etc. Not everyone can do the same things for you on every issue.

Having a staffer directly confront you with the question, no matter how bluntly he does it, is a good thing. It forces you to think through the position you are taking and hone the message to that office. Some staffers just politely bob their heads and sit there making a shopping list so that they look like they are taking notes on everything you are saying. This guy was direct, confrontational and abrupt and I'm glad we went to see him. He wanted to know exactly what we want of him and by getting direct and somewhat harsh, he forced us to think it through aloud with him, which ultimately is better both for him and for us.

Of course, I'm glad that all 535 offices aren't as challenging as that New Yorker. If they were, this week would be even more exhausting than it already is.