As a RESULTS group leader, I have a conference call every Monday evening with the RESULTS Regional Coordinator responsible for organizing all the globally focused RESULTS groups in California. During the last call I committed to contacting my congressman’s office this week and letting him know about two recently introduced bills: The House Microenterprise Empowerment and Job Creation Act of 2011 (H.R. 2524) and the Education for All Act of 2011 (H.R. 2705).
Last week, I made the same commitment for the microenterprise act and didn’t keep it. Tonight I’m happy to say I sent an e-mail with a supporting fact sheet for each of the bills mentioned above to Dan Mauer in Representative George Miller’s office. Dan is the Legislative Aide in Rep. Miller’s office responsible for handling policy in the areas of veteran’s affairs, military, foreign policy, tax policy and government affairs.
I met Dan a couple years ago and saw him again last June while I was in DC for the RESULTS International Conference. He’s a great guy and probably the most responsive aide I’ve had the pleasure to work with in the almost two decades I’ve volunteered in RESULTS. Being a legislative aide means Dan’s responsible for becoming aware of, researching, and reviewing policy in the House of Representatives in the areas that he covers. If he thinks a bill, resolution, letter, or anything else is happening in those areas is something Rep. Miller might be interested in, Dan vets it and runs it up the chain for higher review and approval. Legislative aides are some of the hardest working people in DC. Their efforts and coordination with their peers in other legislators’ offices behind the scenes often determine whether a bill becomes a law.
Developing good relationships with congressional legislative aides is a key element to advancing support for legislation, especially often overlooked foreign development legislation. Usually legislative aides are young, college graduates often interested in political science or some kind of social policy. They are bright, overworked, underappreciated government workers most taxpayers are unaware of. That’s a shame.
Here is where my good friend Jim and I differ on foreign aid; not that aid should be eliminated, but that there are times of national economic hardship when aid to other nations should be subject to budgets cuts as with any other political/social program.
I had stated, after learning of the impressive accomplishments of RESULTS, that I now support its mission — and I stand by that! I have come to realize that RESULTS is one of the better and more efficient development organizations that I have seen in a very long time. However, more government contributions to any social cause during a ‘national budget emergency’ as critical as budget crises brought about by world wars is, in my opinion, a recipe for an economic train wreck.
Just this morning (08/04), I cringed by a major news agency broadcast that “…the national debt has now reached 100% of the nation’s GDP.” We are now members of a select group of irresponsible governments whose economies are near collapse: Greece, Italy and Belgium.
Although I wholeheartedy support the RESULTS agenda and its goals, I must also demand of my government representatives that continued aid to foreign nations and its citizens, for the time being, take a second seat to our economic health and welfare.
As our economy improves, organizations like RESULTS should be first on the list for helping others in other countries.