How to deal with your Congressional Representatives and their aides
November 18, 2008 – 2:54 pmA question was asked at our last AMI WA meeting, “who do we see at congressional offices?” In local offices, they are staffed with aides who largely deal with constituent problems with some government agency (i.e. social security checks, passport problems, IRS problems, immigration snafus, gov’t pensions, etc.) - i.e. they often act as middlemen between some gov’t agency and constituent.
The people we want to see are legislative aides (LA), and unfortunately for us, they are located in Washington DC. Hence the local office will provide some aide responsible for a particular area (in our case, banking & finance, etc.) and that aide will meet with us and simply pass our message to DC offices. Sometimes, on rare occasions, they will fly their LA from DC to local offices to meet with constituents.
If we make a good enough impression on the local aide- enough for them to warrant the LA a trip from DC to meet with us. So you will need to talk them into meeting yourself in person.
I’ve noted Jim McDermott (7th district rep for Washington State) has authored or co-authored some bills calling for some tax increase or funding some program, etc. You might want to use that as a reference and suggest there are much better ways to fund gov’t without the need to tax us to the death, etc. Arouse their curiosity, etc. If they give you the name of their responsible LA , you can always call the Capitol Hill offices toll-free: 1-800-828-0498. You can try that number and ask for Rep. McDermott’s office and ask for LA in banking & finance….
Hope this helps,
Gordon
Tags: Congress, Government, Help, Senate
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