My phone reminded me this morning that GAC starts tomorrow…and I am reminded that I promised my friends at CUNAverse not just one but two blogs before GAC.  I beg forgiveness… we’ve been a little busy here in Washington.

If you’re coming to town this weekend for the GAC, I want you to know that we’re counting on you to help us bring the member business lending bill across the finish line.  I promise you it won’t be easy – in fact, you’ll probably leave DC quite frustrated – but I know we can move the ball if we put it in your hands.

The Senate is presently considering a bill that is generously being referred to as a jobs bill. In reality what this legislation does is relax a set of investor protections in the hopes that businesses will use the savings they receive from reduced regulatory compliance to hire new workers.  No one has estimated how many jobs this might create.  Yet, the bill passed the House of Representatives with almost 400 votes, and the Senate is poised to act perhaps as soon as next week.

What better time to have 4,000 credit union advocates in Washington, DC?

It is not going to be easy getting the MBL bill included in this “jobs” package.  Even though we have made an indisputable case for raising the MBL cap, we have a number of things working against us.

First, there is a strong desire among Senate Republicans to simply take up the House-passed and pass it as is.  (It did pass with almost 400 votes, afterall).  This means the Democratic leadership will be under pressure to simply move it along.  The faster this bill moves through the Senate, the harder it will be to get attached.

Second, if we were successful in getting the amendment considered, we would need to secure 60 votes for its passage.  This is not an impossible task; but in a world in which many Senators don’t believe the MBL bill will come to a vote, they are sometimes reluctant to show their cards unless they have to.  While we have confidence that we have, if not sixty, close to sixty votes, no one really knows.  Perhaps this is why the Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association have recently stepped up their effort to block the MBL bill.  (The ABA ran expensive radio ads on the very popular Washington radio station WTOP).

We have very little ability to affect the first challenge – slowing down the bill.  However, there is a group of Democratic Senators trying to do just that.

The second challenge is completely within our hands.  We can get sixty votes (and more) on this legislation.  We’ve laid the ground work to get there.  Everyone in Washington is talking about Mark Udall and his “quixotic” bid to – gasp – allow credit unions to help small businesses.  But to get there, we need to turn up the pressure.  Many don’t believe there is going to be a vote, but we continue to push.

If your Senator is not with us, it’s time to ask them why not?  If they tell you they aren’t with us because it’s not going to come up for a vote, make sure they don’t have any policy concerns.  When they tell you they have no policy concerns (or after you’ve addressed their concerns), let them know small business owners and credit union members throughout their state expect their vote.

The Udall bill would help create 140,000 new jobs in the first year by allowing credit unions to lend an additional $13 billion to small businesses at no cost to taxpayers… and the only folks blocking this bill are the banks that bailed on small business during the crisis, had to be bailed out by taxpayers, were begged to lend to small businesses, and refused that call.  We can get this done.

The day of reckoning is approaching.  With your help next week, we’ll bring that day closer.

Stay tuned for future advocacy posts from Ryan Donovan

In November, I had the opportunity to speak with a small group of credit union executives about what CUNA has been doing in terms of legislative advocacy and political activity.  They asked me to speak with them for about an hour and they wanted me to focus on issues other than member business lending, supplemental capital and interchange.  I relished this opportunity:  The truth of the matter is that, while these issues along with preservation of the tax status are top legislative priorities for CUNA, there are dozens of issues that we work on daily which get much less attention but are no less important.

We talked about our comprehensive efforts on reducing regulatory burden for credit unions, including the work we have done on legislation to make changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; our efforts to protect credit unions from lawsuits filed by patent trolls and ATM vandals; our efforts to encourage Congress to enact a long term reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program; the work we are doing on cyber security legislation; and, of course, the coordinate effort to engage the now-defunct Super Committee in defense of the credit union tax status.

Right before I took questions from the group, I uttered a sentence that immediately lit a light bulb above my head: “Now, if this is the first time you’re hearing about our work on these issues, then we’re not doing a good enough job getting the word out, and that will improve.”  Publishing an advocacy blog on a regular basis is one of the ways that I am committed to improving this.

When I speak to credit union groups, I often tell them that part of my job is explaining credit unions to Congress, but another very important part of my job is explaining Congress to credit unions.  The former is often much easier than the latter, and that’s why I’m starting this blog—to try to explain how what is happening in Washington is relevant to credit unions.

CUNA has a number of communication mechanisms that help those who are interested know what is going on and what we’re working on.  My contributions to CUNAverse will not be a substitute for any of them.  NewsNow is a must-read resource for all sorts of credit union and CUNA news, including a section focused specifically on what is going on in Washington.  The Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Departments both publish weekly updates for CUNA members that discuss the issues percolating in Washington.  If you want to know what is going on and what is CUNA doing about it, these are terrific resources.  For those who want to dig a little deeper on the legislative side, I hope you will find my contributions here valuable.