8 THE NAFCU JOURNAL SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2022 WASHINGTON AND INDUSTRY BRIEFS Advocacy is one of the core missions of NAFCU. We spend every day on Capitol Hill and at the agencies fighting for credit unions. We fight to remove obstacles to growing and serving your members and fight new laws and regulations that could harm credit unions. This is our passion. However, we need your help, because our message is even more amplified when credit union executives and volunteers engage directly with decision makers in Washington, D.C. You can provide support by submitting feedback through comment letters, joining NAFCU meetings with agencies, or visiting with your Member of Congress. As a constituent and voter, your voice matters. While the past few years have generally been good for credit unions, the risks that policymaking can pose to credit unions is starting to be seen. This is why credit unions, employees, and volunteers need to engage in Washington early, and often. November 8 is election day and I want to give you some highlights of why this election matters, and why we need to make sure that we elect members of Congress who understand credit unions and the difference you make for main street Americans. Right now, the White House and Congress are controlled by one party. Having one party control all levers of government can be dangerous for credit unions, whether it is Democrats or Republicans. As the founding fathers recognized, checks and balances are important to our government. When both parties are present, those checks and balances exist and allow us to prevent bad policies from becoming law, while also enabling Congress to have greater oversight of the Executive agencies. Here are two examples from the past year: 1. IRS Reporting: In the Administration’s effort to find revenue to pay for an ambitious package of social programs, they came up with an idea to close the “tax gap.” This idea would have every bank and credit union in the country report on consumer accounts that receive more than $200 in deposits in a year, virtually every American who has a bank account. This would have been an unprecedented violation of Americans’ financial privacy and would have posed an enormous burden on credit unions to track these accounts. Furthermore, it WHAT THE 2022 ELECTIONS COULD MEAN FOR CREDIT UNIONS By Greg Mesack, NAFCU SVP of Government Affairs would have placed in the hands of the Treasury Department a tremendous database of information that would be susceptible to cyber criminals, all without any proof that collecting this information would increase government revenues. Because of the advocacy of NAFCU and its members, we were able to just barely stop this policy from becoming law. Our grassroots sprang into action. Credit unions and their members reached out to their Senators and Members of Congress to voice their opposition. NAFCU used every tool at its disposal and worked with our champions on Capitol Hill to fight this provision. While we were able to stop it, the idea is not dead. This battle over IRS reporting is concrete proof of why election outcomes can be pivotal for the credit union industry. We were only at risk because one party controls all levels of government. Had there been a “Our message is even more amplified when credit union executives and volunteers engage directly with decision makers in Washington, D.C. You can provide support by submitting feedback through comment letters, joining NAFCU meetings with agencies, or visiting with your Member of Congress. As a constituent and voter, your voice matters.”
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