Lobby the New US Government!
Do you have a letter to the incoming Republican administration that you would like to share? This is the place to post it!
In addition, we need effective ideas to get our voices heard. The letter-writing is great but we need to do more. Please share your ideas! Please post any contact information you find!
January 2017: See this post also Contact US House Ways and Means Committee re Tax Reform Now!
Sample Letters
Please post your letter/s in the comment section and I’ll add them here.
Letter to President-Elect Trump from Muzzled No More, November 2016
Letter to Senator Rand Paul from George, November 2016
Letter to Congressman re Rep. Mark Meadows’ Bill H.R. 5935, To Repeal the Violation of Several Nations’ Laws and Privacy Matters, from Anonymous, November 2016. (Note: in this pdf, the letter is preceded by a page of info and tips for letter-writers)
Letters sent to Senate Finance Committee, International Tax Working Group, 2015
Letters sent to House Ways and Means Committee, 2013
Informational Materials
Dumping Obama’s fax foreign legislation should be high on Trump’s to-do list by James George Jatras
Constitutionality of Citizenship Based Taxation by Heitor David Pinto
Contact Info (Transition Team, Senators, Congressmen, Ways and Means Committee)
Please post contact info in the comment section and I’ll add it here.
Here are names of all the members of the transition team along with the specific responsibility of each. There is no contact info yet (except for the chairman’s twitter) but we’ll post that as soon as we get it. It’s concerning that there is no specific person charged with responsibility for the massive tax overhaul that was envisioned in the Platform. Perhaps the tax issue is included in economic, domestic or budgetary matter.
The transition team is currently in a state of flux, so we’ll be editing this list to reflect that over the coming days and we’ll add to the list of contacts as we get more information
Mr. Trump’s transition team twitter site: https://twitter.com/transition2017
You can also share your ideas at: https://www.greatagain.gov
The Trump team is asking for suggestions: https://apply.ptt.gov/yourstory/
Party Leadership, Senators, Congressmen
Contact Info (snail mail and phone) Spreadsheet with tips and strategies. This is a work in progress, compiled by Kara, and was found through the Rachel: Not a Turkey twitter page.
Individuals to inform:
Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff: @Reince
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House: @SpeakerRyan
Congressman Paul Ryan
Janesville Constituent Services Center
20 South Main Street Suite 10
Janesville, WI 53545 USA
Co-sponsors of the House kill-FATCA bill
Rep. Mick Mulvaney
Rep. Jeff Duncan
Rep. David Schweikert
Rep. Mark Sanford
Senate Finance Committee
Contact List: Ways and Means Committee and Finance Committee
House Ways and Means Committee
Contact List: Ways and Means Committee and Finance Committee
Twitter:
Kevin Brady, Chairman: @RepKevinBrady
The Transition Team
Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, chairman: @mike_pence
Rich Bagger, executive director of transition team
Ron Nicol, overseer of the 5 principal policy teams
Ron Burgess, intelligence
Dan DiMicco, trade
Kay Cole James, management & budget
Ado Machida, reviewer of Obama’s executive actions (!)
David Malpass, economy
Ed Meese, management & budget
Bill Palatucci, transition team’s general counsel
Mike Rogers, national security
William Walton, economy
Paul Winfree, management and budget
Tricia: I think Barbara has a good point. Why not re-send the package of letters we all sent in in, what was it, 2013? We’re still here with the same complaints we had then because they were unaddressed. New Congress, new Committees. They need to hear, once again, about the seriousness of what we’re dealing with and that we expect them to get down to business and fix it, not with bandaids like SCE, but with a full-scale amputation of CBT.
@Anthony, welcome onboard. The ship may be old, the sails my have holes and at times we are plugging leaks with gum and wax but the crew is a proud crew and you will not find better company.
Part of taking action is also taking back control, there is a therapy to action which you need, I need, we all need.
First step forward…rewrite a letter to Congress…there are now two templates that can help.
You need to figure who do you write first. I like the idea of Rand Paul as he is an obvious champion to the cause. But there are others…..
I think you need to write to people on our side like Rand Paul and a few others PLUS your theoretical reps in Congress.
Add a personal touch to the letter how this is hurting YOU.
You need to ask for a SPECIFIC action to be taken, such as I am asking Rand Paul to ask Trump to unsign the IGAs.
Thats a start.
My letter writing plan over several weeks, by week;
1. Unsign the IGA
2. Fullfill promise of FATCA repeal.
3. Fast track to regain citizenship.
4. State Department to adopt presumption that a person born overseas is NOT a USC unless and until that person CLAIMS it.
@Muzzled, do we have a pack of those letters in pdf?
I would like to print out and start including them with my letters I will be sending out.
You have a great idea there and we do not need to reinvent the wheel.
@ADCT and @ADCT, guys have you thought about doing a press release on the election and the GOP Platform? Its a way to garner attention and a fresh tool people can put into mailings.
@George Thank you for the welcome, I appreciate it! Glad to participate.
Since my last address was in Texas and my family live in Texas, so far I wrote 2 seperate letters based on the 2 posted sample letters in the “older comments” of this post. One was to Kevin Brady and the other to Ted Poe. I am not 100% sure what their stances on FATCA/CBT are, but I figured that was a good place to start. I’ve also urged family and friends in the US to write letters (I will update them with your 4 points to address).
I made sure to make it more personalized while addressing everything that I (we) want to happen. I quoted the Republican Party Platform book stating the stance on FATCA, IGAs and CBT and urged them to go through with it and not forget us. I will be sure to include points 3 and 4 in future letters.
My Next letter is to Rand Paul
@George
My wife and kids are all USC. Our relatives all live in America (my wife is visiting there now). I have friends there. As a Canadian, I sleep beside the elephant– if the elephant rolls over, I am the mouse who gets crushed! Even if I have checked out, I still have a stake in the game.
Good to see you posting here again– I learned so much from your posts in the past.
All the best,
BC Doc
USCA, thanks for the correction. Typing too fast.
iota, I don’t know any more about what Ways & Means staff are doing other than what I read in the article. Just thought it might provide some names and contacts.
George WTF Why on earth would anyone try to regain citizenship- especially after the election. Come on man!
@Muzzled and Barbara and George,
There was, in 2013 I believe, a call from the House of Ways and Means Committee for responses as Dave Camp and the Committee came up with a tax reform proposal. We were “just Brock” then (no ADCS-ADSC or ADCT) and I can’t recall if we were particularly organized about it. It seems one can no longer access those on the Ways and Means Committee Site. I thought that was part of what Barbara put up on the one site which I will have to search for the link. If not, then what she put up there was our more-organized effort of 2015 when the Senate Finance Committee solicited responses regarding tax reform and one of the sub-sections was international tax. We have some of that here:
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/3445133780 but I don’t at the moment see the individual submissions which I thought had been added.
Calgary and Barbara worked together on that. I think you will find they have the answer. We could though ask for submissions to add to those packages from people who were not here at the time?
Wish I could be more helpful but I am unclear on locations of the individual submissions…….
@All
One development yesterday could quite possibly be immensely helpful to us. Reince Preibus is being considered for Chief-of-Staff for PE Trump. Mr. Preibus is the current head of the RNC and has close ties to Republicans Overseas. He is aware of our issues. Need I say more?
spoke too soon
Here are 2013
https://app.box.com/files/0/f/3414062298/House%20Ways%20and%20Means%20Submis…
@George
Yes, I remember that you took me to task. I am very glad we are “good” now.I appreciate your kind comments. I make so many mistakes….
I loved Magnum PI as I think all teenage girls of the time did (LOL). I don’t remember the specific episode, but get your point. I shall try to do that and ignore unrelated items. As an aside, I once had a next-door-neighbor who had 2 Dobermans. He was a nice fellow except for the way he treated those dogs. It used to be common for people to beat them thinking it provoked meanness supporting protection. It was heartbreaking to listen to……….
As to a press release, I will talk to Stephen. Usually we have some sort of event or something specific that warrants releasing a PR. I guess it could be something as general as supporting a new effort re Tax Reform but that has to be a focus…….we are uniquely placed among the expat organizations having a tie to Republicans Overseas and can probably build upon that.
DoD
I know at least 2 people who want/would take their US citizenship back. I would not consider it but everybody is different.
@ Patricia Moon
Barbara compiled the Senate Finance Committee submissions from 2015 but unfortunately the link to her archive doesn’t open for me now — http://fatca.eu.pn/ The links to each submission that I had no longer lead to the individual submissions. I hope Barbara can retrieve these.
I have all the Ways and Means Committee submissions from 2013 saved in pdf form. Those are not lost at least.
@Embee could you send your PDF to a mods so it could be archived at IBS.
@bc doc to quote a great countryman of ours.
We must all hang together or we shall asuradly be hung separately.
Should we fail in the next 12 months you me and our families will be ground into dust, I am that serious on the stakes.
@ George
There are about 200 pdfs — one for each submission. If someone wants these I’ll be happy to e-mail them out in batches.
@EmBee
Let’s compare what you have with what is on the box site……..find the simplest way
Why don’t you send me one email with say 5 files, I’ll take a look and if they are the same, I might be able to transfer them easier from the box site I will need Pacific to get it on the sidebar They are having their meeting in Ottawa right now
You have my personal email I believe – I do not want that posted publicy, please
@George.
Reagan and Bush Sr. were honourable men. I didn’t agree with their politics and believed much of their policy was misguided, but underneath it all think they were decent and honourable men. Bush Jr? Terrible policies but I suspect if I sat down with him for a beer, I’d probably come away from it thinking he’s a pretty OK guy.
Trump is different. My background is Arts– I’m an old political science graduate– but my profession is medicine. My practice is heavy on the psychiatry side. Trump, IMO, is gasoline and poses an existential threat to both the United States and her neighbours. Historically, I can’t think of an individual president who was so dangerously unqualified (emphasis on the dangerously) to assume the office of the presidency. In this nuclear age, giving someone with an inability to manage his impulsivity and a tendency to overreact at perceived slights direct control over the nuclear stockpile frankly scares the hell out of me. Not surprisingly my psychiatrist colleagues who I work with express similar opinions. Combine his mental instability with his campaign platform of intolerance of the “other” and this is not a person who I have any interest in in lobbying. For the sake of all of us, I hope time proves me wrong, but I think the guy represents the wrong side of history.
@ Patricia Moon
I can’t open your box to compare so that sounds like a good plan. They are probably the same as what you have. An e-mail is on its way to you.
My most heartfelt thanks to those who’ve renounced but continue to fight on behalf of justice and equality, when you could easily walk away in relative peace. What keeps you going?
I remember http://fatca.eu.pn/
archive.org tried once to archive it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161021083154/http://www.fatca.eu.pn/
“Page cannot be displayed due to robots.txt.”
Sigh.
@All
In a couple of emails, EmBee and I realized something. While all these letters are in the public domain and it is perfectly ok to store them, link and so on, we are not at all sure it is okay to actually send them. They are not ours and perhaps the authors would not necessarily respond the same now.
What we can do, is resend the ones that come from our submission, assuming no one would object.
We can put them up here so people can have examples and we cant tweet them and so on.
Just not sure about “acting on their behalf.”
Uh oh. Seems to be a problem with fatca.eu.pn. It’s often flagged as a potential malware site–it is not one, but is probably flagged as such because of some unsavory sites also using eu.pn. I’ll see if I can find all the original PDFs and place them elsewhere.
@Bubblebustin
“My most heartfelt thanks to those who’ve renounced but continue to fight on behalf of justice and equality, when you could easily walk away in relative peace. What keeps you going?”
My fundamental belief that US extraterritorial tax law and CBT are fundamentally immoral keeps me going. As well, I have relatives within the US who are adversely affected by US tax law. They are beginning to find out how penalties for not filing information returns can be very unjust and costly. The situation is beginning to affect home landers as well as unfortunate US expats.US/ IRS invasion of privacy and money grabbing is a growing phenomena.
We need to keep the Canadian lawsuit going.
Thanks for your continued effort Bubblebustin and others.