The Congressional-Company Visit Kit: Practical Steps for Unparalleled Results
What You Need to Know
Part 1
The ESOP Association will be running every Tuesday for the next seven weeks, tips for putting together a Congressional Company Visit. All of the information that will be featured in these excerpts is available on the Association’s website – http://www.esopassociation.org. The full Kit is available on the homepage under News. Today we are featuring – What You Need to Know, Part 1.
Foreword
Please note, if and your co-owners follow the enclosed steps to obtain a visit of a member of Congress, or his or her top staff person, to your company, and you let The ESOP Association know, we will supplement the following document with a short report on the member of Congress who will visit your company.
The report we will supply will tell you what prior record, if any, the member of Congress has on ESOP issues. The report will tell you what committees in Congress the member serves on, and what relevancy, if any, those committees have to ESOP laws. The report will tell you what the public record says is that member’s prime interests as a legislator, and the major, if any, legislative initiatives the member of Congress is involved with. Finally this report will share any interesting data about the member who will visit your company that is relevant to her or his service in Congress, and/or issues.
For example, the report might contain information that the member of Congress was a small business person before going to Congress. This fact would be interesting in that most ESOP companies, and probably yours, are small, privately held businesses. The report might have information that the member recently served in the military. The report might have information that his or her predecessor was a strong supporter of ESOPs. The report might have information that she or he was a lawyer in a law firm that does ESOP legal work.
In other words, The ESOP Association stands ready to give you the most up to date information and ideas for a successful visit by a member of Congress to your company, which is our most important, and most powerful lobbying tool.
[Note: The reference to Member of Congress includes a member of the U.S. Senate, or U.S. House of Representatives.]
Introduction: This document establishes why having a member of Congress visit an ESOP company, your ESOP company, is the most important government relations activity you can undertake, and sets forth steps for arranging a visit, what might be done during the visit, and what is the follow-up to the visit.
Fact: The ESOP Association’s members have advocated for ESOPs with members of Congress since 1980. There is one fact that has been consistent the entire time: This fact is that the most effective activity in obtaining the support for ESOPs from a member of Congress is having that member of Congress visit an ESOP company. The company visit is more effective than a visit in the member of Congress’s home office and certainly more effective than visiting with a member of Congress in Washington DC. (Note, when using the term “member of Congress,” included is a Senator.)
To make the factual case—since 1982, no member who has visited an ESOP company in his or her Congressional District or State has failed to take the pro-ESOP position. At worse, one member, who visited an ESOP company in 1985, took a neutral ESOP position after having taken a position not in favor of ESOPs in 1984. In fact, most members of Congress who have visited ESOP companies have become ESOP Champions, or even ESOP Super Champions.
The ESOP position of members of Congress who were exposed to ESOP advocates during DC visits by those advocates does not match the track record of those who have visited with an ESOP company in his or her home district or state.
In sum, if you want to have your member of Congress support pro-ESOP positions, the most effective step you could take would be to arrange a visit by that member of Congress to your company.
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