NACS Members Take Action
This week, more than 50 NACS members visited Capitol Hill and met with more than 100 members of Congress and congressional staff to discuss critical industry issues such as credit card interchange, health-care reform, climate change and ethanol equipment compatibility. This type of engagement with elected officials is essential to ensure that the voice of the convenience and petroleum retailing industry is heard by Congress.
Throughout the year, we ask you to take action by writing to your legislators or calling their offices to deliver key messages. This type of engagement represents the minimum that must be done. Taking the effort a step further, you can really make a difference by sitting down with your officials and telling them how policies they consider will affect your business, your employees and your community.
In the meetings this week, each retailer was accompanied by a NACS government relations team member to help field questions from legislators that are more specifically ?Inside the Beltway? issues, or those that are really technical from a legislative process perspective. The NACS member brought the issues home by discussing the local effect.
NACS wants to thank those members who traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to engage in the process. If you are interested in learning how you can become part of this effort, let us know. Contact either John Eichberger, vice president of government relations, or Myra Gravois, director of political affairs, for more information.
Health Care Debate?Continued
Comprehensive health-care reform remained front and center in Congress this week. The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid,�began its long-awaited markup on Tuesday. At press time, the Committee was slogging through more than 500 Democratic and Republican amendments that were filed last Friday. Thus far, there have been no significant changes to the proposal set forth by Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT). That language would impose an individual mandate to secure health insurance coverage, create an "exchange" for insurance coverage, and impose taxes for those that do not participate in the system. The markup is complicated by the Finance Committee's decision to consider proposed policies rather than actual legislative language. Republican amendments on major issues (for instance, on including some medical malpractice reform provisions) have been rejected along party lines. NACS is making sure that the interests of its members are protected.
In the House, the Energy and Commerce Committee completed action on its version of comprehensive health-care reform. Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) used an unprecedented procedure to consider about a dozen amendments to H.R. 3200, "America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009," which the Committee had originally passed in late July. H.R. 3200 contains essentially everything that President Obama has asked for, including (most importantly) a so-called "public option," new health cooperatives and new mandates on coverage. Although no final score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been made available, some estimate that the bill may cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Importantly, with this action, all the critical House Committees have now acted in the House. The conventional wisdom is that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will wait to see what happens in the Senate Finance Committee before bringing a bill to the House floor.
Stay tuned for more updates on this critical issue in future issues of NACS Daily.
Staff Contact: Julie Fields, jfields@nacsonline.com, (703) 518-4251
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