Sara Cline- April 24, 2010

I forgot to blog last week, so sorry this update is coming late. I don't have much to report on from the last week, however, because I was only in the office Monday-Wednesday (I went back to Champaign for one last undergraduate moms' weekend!) During that time, I worked a lot on the schedule for the Greek visits.. we ended up getting about 430+ meetings, which is great!

I got back into town on Sunday evening, and started working bright and early on Monday. I started Monday at a hotel in VA (the hotel the 100 Greek students were staying at) where I helped with the student training. In case you haven't read my previous posts, I'll briefly describe the purpose of the Greek visits before going into the details from this past week. My boss represents the NIC and NPC (umbrella organizations for many fraternities and sororities), and organizes a Greek lobbying day each spring where Greek students as well as members of fraternity and sorority executive boards come to DC to lobby Congress on Greek issues. Apparently Greeks have needed representation in DC for awhile- starting with making sure that they were able to stay single-sex organizations (something that was threatened Title IX). The main concern of Greeks right now is trying to get Congress to pass the Collegiate Housing and Infrastructure Act, legislation which would make donations to not-for-profit non-University housing (fraternities, sororities, Hillel, Newman, Evans Scholars, etc.) tax-deductible (which it isn't now because of a tax code glitch).

Going back to the activities of this week, the Greeks came to DC on Saturday and started training on Sunday. Since I was out of town, I was not there, but know they spent the majority of the day learning about the legislation and how to lobby effectively. When I met up with the group on Monday, we continued with training and I worked on scheduling more meetings for the group.

On Tuesday, the students went around to Congressional offices to speak with members and staff about the issue, and try to gain co-sponsors. Before the visits started, we were at 185 co-sponsors in the House and 29 in the Senate. On Tuesday I went to ten different offices to discuss CHIA (and was lucky enough to talk to a few actual members- Jesse Jackson Jr, Danny Davis and Kathy Castor). In the meeting with Congressman Jackson, we talked about the legislation, and he saw our point of view immediately and said he would be on the bill by the end of the day. We had a meeting with a number of former sponsors (the bill has been around since 2003, and each time a new session of Congress begins, the bill has to be reintroduced and everything starts from scratch with 0 co-sponsors). Based on my meetings, I think that two or three former members I met with will sign back on. As of today, we unofficially have (not all of these have been reported on the Thomas website yet) 205 co-sponsors in the house. We are trying to get up to 218 in the House, so that we have a majority of the members as co-sponsors.

After the meetings on Tuesday, we had a reception for all of the students and alums who participated in the visits, followed by a dinner event for the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee. The PAC funds a bipartisan slate of candidates who are either Greek, support Greek legislation, or have influential positions on the House Ways and Means Committee or the Senate Finance Committee (the bill sits in those two committees in the respective chambers). The PAC dinner was amazing! There were 28 members of Congress (14 Republicans, 14 Democrats) at the dinner. From talking with other people in DC I have found out that this is one of the only times so many members from both parties are at a fundraising event together. Almost all of the members who attended spoke to the group on their positions in Congress as well as their Greek experiences. Unlike meeting with members in their offices, things were very relaxed at this event. At one point the Sigma Chi members of Congress (accompanied by their undergraduate brothers) got up on stage to sing the Sigma Chi sweetheart song. I am so lucky that I was able to help organize and attend this event. Kevin, my boss, was the man who came up with the idea for the Fraternity and Sorority PAC (which is as large as many Fortune 500 PACs) and the reason that so many members of Congress attend the dinner. He is an amazing boss who has accomplished so much, and someone I am very lucky to be working for and learning from.

On Wednesday, I attended the PAC board meeting, where the members of the board decided which candidates they would fund for this election cycle (based on a memo I wrote for the group, but largely orchestrated by Kevin). The group talked about each candidate listed, and decided how much to authorize Kevin to give (on behalf of the group) for the various candidates. They discussed how much support candidates had given to the Greek cause in the past, as well as other factors including which committees they are on and whether or not they would have a "real race." It was extremely fascinating to watch because Kevin seems to know everything about every single candidate and can give important information on most members at the blink of an eye. I feel that without his leadership, the group would be picking candidates "willy-nilly" based on "well I like him or I like her" but without any real guidelines.

Wednesday afternoon I attended a meeting that was supposed to by with my member, Pete Roskam, but he had to go to a meeting so I met with staff. Pete is already a co-sponsor of CHIA, so I talked with his staffer (fellow U of I grad) about options for moving the bill forward and how the Congressman can become a "champion".

Thursday and Friday were spent doing follow up on the visits, and catching up on all of the emails I had missed because I was out of the office for so long. An interesting project I am working on right now is showing how CHIA will stimulate the economy. Senator Landreiu is one of our CHIA champions, and she suggested coming up with a way to demonstrate the jobs that will be created. We already have a list of projects at universities that are ready to go once the funding is there (which we are assuming will come once CHIA is passed), so I am in the process of making a map of the United States that marks off each city (about 140 cities total) where jobs will be created once the projects begin.

Next Wednesday will be my last day, and I have very mixed feelings about leaving. I am getting a little home-sick and want to see my family and friends, however am having a hard time with the idea of leaving. I think CHIA will have 218 co-sponsors in the House very soon, but most likely not while I am in DC (in the last Congress CHIA got to 210 co-sponsors). I feel weird about leaving with work that seems unfinished. However, a new group of interns are about to come in, and I know will do a great job following up with offices and getting CHIA to 218 in the House. Clearly I want CHIA to get to 218, become attached to another piece of legislation and get through the House and Senate and become law, but I wish it were going to happen while I were still in DC actively working on the project.

Next week will be a whirlwind of trying to get as much accomplished as possible before I leave. Hopefully I'll be able to report even more co-sponsors for CHIA, and what will be happening with the project after I leave as well as give everyone a general summary of this internship experience.

After that point, I'll be taking a month off of blogging. I'm going back to campus and will stay there until graduation (unlike the rest of the CLPers, I have yet to graduate). I won't start my next internship (with the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council- a group that represents the hospitals of Chicago) until June, so will not be blogging until then. Hope everyone else is enjoying their internship as much as I am!