Orwell was wise in 1948. Here is some wisdom from another Orwell in 2015 – How to Educate Congress" http://t.co/Npl1Qno26K #yeswecan
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) July 20, 2015
I am making this comment by Orwell into a separate post so that it doesn’t get lost. I think it’s important that Americans abroad do everything they can to make their voices/concerns heard.
This is on and off topic. The DemsAbroad recently posted on FB that they condemn the RO and Rand Paul law suit as irresponsible and driven by greed. They proposed their counter approach which is to tweak the FATCA so as to harm less – I suppose in much the same way that FEIE squelches the voices of dissent with targeted complacency. People responded that the real problem is CBT and DA further stated that this is not the issue at hand, but for the record they have been opposed to CBT since 1992. After 23 years of opposition with less than nothing to show for it (the Dems are the greater evil of the two parties against US Persons Abroad), the DA have just proved that they are irrelevant in their own party.
Their only purpose is to get-out-the-vote. The party will patronize them at its pleasure.
Meanwhile, the RO have seized an historic moment with the lawsuit by taking an unorthodox and bold approach to reach out to US Persons abroad to say to them “we support you”. This is not “we hear you”. It is much stronger. But even “we hear you” would be a first for us. Which brings me to my appeal:
There is a web site that tracks public opinion about pending legislation in the US called popvox. I was told that it gets the attention of members congress, especially when there is a large volume of activity around a piece of legislation.
There is a bill H.R. 3078 proposed by Caroline Maloney (D-NY) and Mike Honda (D-CA) for congress to study the impact of legislation on Americans Living Outside of the US. This was recommended to a friend on Facebook and when I went to the site, it had only 4 votes; 2 for and 2 against. I asked my friend to post an appeal on FB to get people to go to the site and vote for it. It is now 35 for and 3 against.
One of the myriad excuses that Congress, their controlled press and the US Govt use against US Persons Abroad is that the problem is isolated and small: e.g. 3,000 people renouncing each year out of 7.6 million is nothing; and 376 stories of pain and tragedy over “is no crisis”.
As we all know, we are not part of the US community and makes us fair game (“if you are not at the table, you are lunch” — Billy Tauzin). Even when we make our voices known, the very same people who admonish that the US is a democracy and its people have the right to change the laws, minimize and crush our voices.
If this simple legislation is approved, it will force the USG to do an evaluation of the pain inflicted on families all over the world with data that they, themselves commissioned and vetted. It would take away the convenient excuse to look the other way while continuing the infliction. Unless, of course, the legislation is used to prove that the disenfranchisement is indeed insignificant. But if the legislation is never passed, the American people can return to the hollow comforts of their willful ignorance.
A total of 38 voices seems nothing and can easily be swept aside by Congress and their allies in the US press. I note that at this point, the H.R: 3078 has the highest level of the participation and our appeal on FB is not even 24 hours old. On top of that, it has not yet seen the familiar faces of the IBS.
My dream is that the site will see 7.6 million votes (up or down – it does not matter). It will be the loudest voice that web site has ever seen. The message is clear – “we are here”.
Here is the link:
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/114/hr3078
Unfortunately, you have use a US address to register – irony indeed… If you don’t have one, then use the address of your representative’s office and say that you’ve done this and why, so that they will not see it as a prank.Please, do your best – use e-mail, friends, social media, to appeal to the few in the homeland know that we exist, who care about us and know our suffering. After you make your appeal to your friends, thank them when the numbers go up and then give them periodic updates to let them know how we’re doing.
I know – this vote does not mean anything either. It will be so easily dismissed because there is no validation of identity or authenticity. However, just the fact that we blew the roof off the site will get attention.
I’ll repeat my comment from the other thread:
@Orwell,
“No organizations supporting yet.”
So where are DA, RO, ACA, AARO, et al.?
And I’ll repeat mine …
You can track the progress of H.R.3078 here:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3078
And here’s Rand Paul’s repeal FATCA bill S.663:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/663
All I can say is good luck to both.
I promised myself that I would only focus on litigations and never send “another letter to Congress” — but I just supported this bill on popvox using my voting address (last U.S. residence in Washington state).
Report from the horse’s mouth
Okay, everybody, I just phoned Rep. Carol Maloney’s office and spoke to her Policy Advisor, Max Whitcomb. It was an interesting call. First, he reiterated that Rep. Maloney (Democrat) is a founding member of the Americans Overseas Caucus, which he described as studying issues affecting Americans overseas and making representations to Congress.
So what, then, is the “Commission to study how Federal laws and policies affect United States citizens living in foreign countries” as proposed by HR 3078? He replied that it would be a commission of up to 100 members of the House of Representatives to study issues affecting Americans overseas and make representations to Congress.
So I asked, what is the difference, then, between the Caucus and the proposed Commission? Will the Commission have greater authority to propose legislation? No, he said, but the Commission will have a one-year time limit to concentrate on specific issues and then make representations. (Then why doesn’t the f—ing Caucus give itself the same deadline, I wanted to ask, but didn’t).
I asked him whether the Commission will include expat taxes, FATCA and FBARs as one of its core topics, and he said it would.
He then told me–breaking news–that Rep. Maloney has composed a letter to Treasury Secretary Lew, urging him to immediately institute Same Country Exemption for FATCA, and that she will circulate the letter to gather as many signatures as possible from other Congresspeople. This letter will be issued sometime next week.
Since my purported purpose for the call was to gather information about the above topics, and not to voice opinions, I did mention that most US expats thought SCE was a poor solution, but I didn’t press him on it.
I then asked whether he or Rep. Maloney would take the trouble to read letters and opinions on the topic of taxes, FATCA and FBAR, and he gave the noncommittal answer that “we always happy to hear from US citizens abroad.” And that they liaise with other groups, naming ACA and DA. I told him to expect a packet from me with 290 letters.
I then phoned Rep. Mike Honda’s office. He’s the other sponsor of HR 3078, and a member of the so-called Caucus. I was told I should speak with his Political Advisor, Mark Mozena, but that he had just entered a meeting. What with the 12-hour time difference, I don’t have a chance to call back. I did get his e-mail, though, and will write him and attempt a call tomorrow.
But I think I got the information I needed from the first call. The Americans Abroad Caucus is a Democrat tool, now pushing SCE only. If this bill passes, one can assume that the Commission will be something along the lines of the Senate Finance Committee, divided into subcommittees on various topics, but not limited to taxation matters. So another chance for us to scream at the wall. Or maybe have a weensy bit of influence.
My take on the matter is that, although I will send the full set of SFC submissions to both these Congresspeople’s offices, it won’t make much difference. There is a slight chance that the proposed Commission might listen to us. On the positive side, in my limited experience years ago, House members are somewhat more amenable to listening to their constituents than Senators.
If anyone wishes to make their own contact with these Congresspeople, here is the contact info:
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (represents Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens)
Max Whitcomb, Policy Advisor
phone 202-225-7944
(didn’t ask his e-mail, but guessing max.whitcomb@mail.house.gov)
Rep. Mike Honda (represents Silicon Valley)
Mark Mozena, Policy Advisor
phone 202-225-2631
e-mail mark.mozena@mail.house.gov
Nice work, Barbara! Thank you. Shameful no organization has participated. Maybe they know something we don’t?
Wow! I am humbled at how quickly this has taken off on IBS.
Thank you all for your support. @Embee and @Barbara – thank you both for moving this to the the top. Your notes above on the call to Caroline Maloney are instructive. Imagine that if this will be studied for one year, that would mean that the outcome would be published around the time of the presidential primaries. After RBT got swiftboated in the 2012 election, we could possibly have a serious national conversation about why Corporations get RBT but individuals don’t. If corporations are persons, why aren’t people persons?
The PopVox site seems to be registering a lot of hits now. Leave to the IBS to drive numbers quickly. Not sure how fast the graphs are updated, but the comments are coming by the minute now.
Thanks for your good work and reporting here, Barbara. I’m sure by the time I’m back to Brock later today, there will be a lot to catch up on!!!
“. . . the DA have just proved that they are irrelevant in their own party.” Yes, and they are also irrelevant to everyone living abroad with US taint. The fact that the DA is publicly attacking the Bopp lawsuit shows their loyalty is to the IRS and irrelevant politicians like Rangel, not to Americans actually living abroad.
“He then told me–breaking news–that Rep. Maloney has composed a letter to Treasury Secretary Lew, urging him to immediately institute Same Country Exemption for FATCA, and that she will circulate the letter to gather as many signatures as possible from other Congresspeople. This letter will be issued sometime next week.” Even though SCE is by no means a complete solution and CBT needs to be scrapped, this step is a positive one that, if heeded by both parties and enacted, would bring relief to many “US persons” around the world, including people considered mentally unfit to renounce. In other words, until FATCA can be scrapped, SCE is an INCOMPLETE solution that can help a subset of the minnows who are the collateral damage inflicted by FATCA.
Repealing FATCA and implementing CBT is also necessary for the US to keep its dollars used for international trade although, with the exception of Rand Paul, members of Congress fail to understand that. The onerous cost of implementing FATCA and threat of crippling penalties drives global banks away from using American dollars and toward the BRICS. FATCA/CBT is also driving away investors and making it hard or impossible for Americans to represent American products abroad.
@Barbara Excellent investigative work.
Honda and Maloney are Democrats. I sent them a lengthy tome in June 2014, encouraging them in their then H.R.597 – Commission on Americans Living Abroad Act 113th Congress (2013-2014). That did not go anywhere. I suppose (2014-2015) is a leap year. Now this (2015-2016) which sounds like a reincarnation of H.R. 597 sounding good to investigate impact on American policies on US persons overseas, yet with out of touch terms of reference: See Section 4 2 (A)-(G)
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr597/text
The above sounds very Homelander centric.
The new sounds like the old:
https://honda.house.gov/news/press-releases/americans-abroad-caucus-members-maloney-honda-new-commission-needed-to-study
I wish to scrap the terms of reference, and have them start from scratch using the submissions to the Senate Finance committee as a basis.
And where is that link for the old Ways and Means committee submissions?
I e-mailed Solomon Yue and asked why the Americans Abroad Caucus was not controlled by Republicans as the House is controlled by Republicans. No answer.
@ Orwell
The Ways and Means link doesn’t work anymore but I saved all the pdf submissions that were CBT related (over 200).
@EmBee – sounds fantastic. May we get a page up here at IBS and maybe Maple Sandbox where these may be accessed and immortalized? No rush, yet would be good to be able to reference.
Also at some point we may need to think about archiving submissions to Senate Finance Committee.
Re: voting up H.R. 3078 I fully support this yet also modification of terms of reference as indicated above.
@ JC
You are right about archiving the SFC submissions. If we don’t save them they may disappear. I think Barbara is onto this. And don’t forget that the ADCS (Richardson-Kish) submission (in 7 parts) contains many testimonials too (including videos).
It may be beneficial if we mirror the submission page not leaving anything out put putting here on IBS and MS.
@ JC
Ah yes, mirroring. I’ve heard of that … no idea how it is done though.
Last night after my call to the Congressional offices, I started having sinister thoughts. Why the sudden call to action on SCE? Why now, after years of empty words and inaction? Is Rep. Maloney suddenly feeling the need to do something, however inadequate, to benefit her many constituents from Manhattan who are in the financial sector and hence frequently transferred abroad?
The conclusion I came to is: No. This isn’t about pushing a measure such as SCE, however inadequate, because of some internal conviction that it’s a step in the right direction.
It’s about politics.
1) It enables the Democrats to show “leadership” on this issue in a proactive way, by actually doing something–banding together to influence the Treasury Secretary, in this case–unlike the Republicans.
2) It’s a dare to Republicans to not sign this letter, and hence allow Democrats to stick out their tongues (this seems to be the prime motivating factor for all Congressional actions on all matters, by both parties)
3) It undermines the ADCS lawsuit. With SCE, the Harper government can now say to the court, “What’s the problem? The IGA doesn’t affect Canadians, duals, or even US expats legitimately domiciled in Canada. It only affects Americans not living in Canada. Therefore it doesn’t violate a single Canadian resident’s rights.”
4) It partially undermines the Bopp lawsuit. The strength of most of the complaints listed in the lawsuit is in the arguments that US persons are shut out from banking, loans, etc. With SCE in effect, the Treasury Department can say: “Our bad. Yes, FATCA had unintended consequences. We fixed that.” To the argument that SCE creates even more compliance burden on FFIs, and will still result in denying accounts and loans to Americans, the Treasury can say: “Even if you’re right, it’s far to early to make that judgement. We need a year or more to see whether that is indeed true.”
Yes, the IGA and FBAR arguments are unaffected by SCE, but FBARs don’t lead to account closures, and though the 4th and 8th Amendment arguments are still valid, without the argument of actual damages incurred, and without the sympathy that engenders, it’s possible that the whole case could be mortally weakened.
I think the sudden rush for a signature campaign among Congresspeople is therefore linked to the Bopp filing and, perhaps, to the August 4 trial in Canada.
It may be slightly counterintuitive, but it seems to me that we should be vehemently opposing SCE, even if it is a “small step in the right direction”, not only because the US government can clap their hands and say, “See? We did something for expats, now stop bothering us”, but as a cynical ploy to undermine current efforts to topple the whole FATCA/FBAR/ET regime.
I actually am hopeful that very few Congresspeople will sign Maloney’s letter. Most remain ignorant of the issues, and may see even SCE as a sop to “billionaire tax evaders” hiding overseas on top of their bags of money.
Final point: despite the above, I support the idea of the proposed Commission. But it seems that based on the last time it was proposed, this bill is unlikely to go anywhere.
What do y’all think?
I suggested Republican Overseas in a great show of bipartisanship be the first organization to enter its support for Americans abroad on the popvox account.
@Barbara
There will be a tipping point. It’s just hard to predict when.
@Barbara
It seems RO agrees with at least one of your hunches. In response to my suggestion, they wrote:
“Republicans Overseas has demonstrated our principled bipartisan approach to 8.7 million overseas Americans’ plight by not only incorporating, but also crediting a study conducted by the Democrat Abroad (http://v.gd/oSZZJu) showing that FATCA wages war against overseas American women and middle-class taxpayers in our FATCA complaint. We have two problems with HR3078: 1) it is a smoke screen to provide political cover for the FATCA Party because DA and House Democrats can’t honestly say that the U.S. Government does not know expats’ agony and needs a commission to study the negative effects and 2) it is a well known tactic In Washington DC – politicians create a commission to study a hot political hot potato in order to bury it. A good example is the National Commission of Fiscal Responsibility and Reform created in 2010 (http://v.gd/ggGROa) by Obama who increased our national debt from $10.6 trillion to $19.1 trillion over six years.”
In other words, HR3078 in a smoke screen, according to RO.
The commission may be a smokescreen, but I see no reason not to support it. Of course Republicans will stick their tongues out at it, because they’re no more grown-up than Democrats. But its enactment will potentially enable other issues to be raised, such as renunciation fees, issues of accidental citizenship, relinquishment rights for minors, and so on; whereas its defeat serves no purpose. But at this time, I see only a pathetic number of 37 votes in support.
It’s the Same Country Exemption proposal I’m worried about, its urgent timing smelling awfully suspicious to me.
@Barbara
Yes, a lot of this doesn’t pass the smell test.
I take about 50% of what RO says with a grain of salt and a great deal of cynicism. Let’s face it, both sides have been ignoring this crisis for a long time. Although I appreciate what they’re doing at this point, I think it’s the IGA’s reciprocal element that’s got them mostly concerned. I’d like to believe otherwise, but I don’t.
Now I don’t know much about how to address these kinds of things, but would establishing a commission be one of the first necessary steps in creating some kind of comprehensive plan to deal with our crisis? Yes, the time for talk is over, but creating a commission be just one step on the critical path to change?
I asked RO what the alternatives to a commission might be, since they won’t support this.
Solomon’s right that it is a smokescreen, and of course it is all political.
So why hasn’t he introduced RBT legislation, which would surely get passed by a Republican-dominated Congress? Let Obama veto it, and then the partisan battle lines would be squarely drawn, if partisan is how he wants to play it.
What I’d really like to see is DA support RO’s efforts, and vice versa. But we’re talking about politicians here, not mature adults, so that is obviously too much to ask.
(And I note that even DA can’t be arsed to express support for this commission on popvox.)
(And I realize Solomon Yue cannot introduce RBT legislation himself, but he could urge someone else to do so, like Rand Paul, perhaps?)
Why don’t you ask him, foo? I feel like I’m getting the runaround on some of my questions tonight, unless you believe that establishing a commission is synonymous with burying the issue.
https://www.facebook.com/republicansoverseas/photos/a.197014807148989.1073741828.187406564776480/405782646272203/?type=1&theater
I asked,
“Thank you for your response, RO. I do however see a commission as possibly the first step in determining and defining what exactly are the issues affecting American abroad. Without a commission, how might our lawmakers actually address them in any kind of comprehensive way? What are the alternatives to a commission in this regard?”
RO,
“The alternative to bury it is to bring expats’ plight out into the open. That is the reason we recruited Sen. Rand Paul to be our Senator plaintiff because he also is a presidential candidate. The Democrats Abroad’s attack on Sen. Paul’s participation in our FATCA lawsuit just guaranteed FATCA to be a presidential election year issue.”
Me,
“Fair enough. I appreciate everything RO and all the plaintiffs are doing, but wouldn’t a commission eventually have to be created to do something about the crisis?”
RO,
“We need political will to defend constitutional principles and to repeal bad legislation. We do not need another government commission to study our problems.”
Are commissions a waste of time as RO claims they are, or did I just get smoked screened?
Barbara,
I think you’re on the right track regarding the why’s for this suddenly (and again) heated-up smoke screen. We have to listen to our gut!
I support the Commission as well. I would like to be optimistic but I think that getting a substantial number of those of us abroad to put our support and reasons into Vox is a bit of a pipe dream. I base this on all the time we’ve tried to rally the troops in the past. I don’t understand / will never understand why we don’t get great support for standing up for our own rights. I am very happy to be proven wrong!!!!!
My submission and vote on Vox is still churning away, trying to send from my computer. Are others having the same problem or is it just my slow computer? I will soon shut down for the day so have what I had to say copied ready to resubmit tomorrow. It may be a better day for my comments to fly to the US.
I certainly also asked why this Vox tool is just open for those who reside in the USA. If nobody could see that little problem, what else do they not see?
Perhaps I will. Though he has refused to consider this in the past, citing something about “needing cover” and insisting they have to wait until there is a Republican president.
Yes, I think commissions are usually smokescreens at worst, and a waste of time at best even with the best of intentions. Still, I don’t believe that is the real reason he is refusing to endorse this bill. It is just partisanship.
My previous comment was addressed to bubblebustin’s question: