Thursday, 13 April 2006
Money, Money, Money!
« Virginia House of Delegates Agrees on Budget, Senate Unlikely to Accept Transporation Funding Level | Main | 100th Anniversary of San Francisco Commemorated by Engineers and Scientists »If you’re like me, your To Do list for this weekend has just one thing, and it’s really a MUST Do: Taxes. That wonderful time of year when you tally up every cent that has passed through your hands in the last year and then find out how much the government owes you (joy!) or how much you owe the government (tragedy!)
While it’s tempting to get discouraged at how much of your hard-earned cash gets sent away, it’s a good opportunity to think about where that money goes. I’m sure we could argue on and on about big government vs. small government, but I’m thinking more along the civil engineering lines.
Right now, congress is thick into the FY 2007 appropriations process. The ASCE Government Relations staff recently put together a list of civil engineering appropriations priorities as part of the briefing materials for Policy Week in March. (Available on the “Six Clicks” advocacy website under the GR Leadership Training tab.) It’s not a huge list – add everything up and it probably wouldn’t even come to one-hundredth of the total federal budget. But it is significant to civil engineers, and to the people who will benefit from these programs: families whose houses will be more likely to withstand the forces of a tornado, hurricane or earthquake thanks to wind and earthquake hazards research programs, people who will get to work faster and safer thanks to road and transit improvements made possible through SAFETEA-LU, just to name a couple examples.
If you’ve ever visited your lawmakers in Washington, D.C., either on your own or as part of a group as ASCE members did during Policy Week 2006, you have seen that you’re just one of hundreds -- or thousands, or hundreds of thousands? -- who visit Capitol Hill every day, waving your sheet of legislative priorities before policy leaders and their staff members. While it’s easy for us to see how a few million dollars can be well spent on our civil engineering priorities, lawmakers are faced with more requests than they could possibly accommodate, and must make tough choices.
All of this presents another opportunity to get discouraged. But that’s not to say that we should give up – NO! In fact, just the opposite. Don’t let your elected leaders off easy! It simply means you must be aware that you are competing with many other interests, and frame your message accordingly. Keep your message short and to the point, so non-technical lawmakers don’t get confused. Make sure your most compelling arguments (how this will benefit the lawmakers’ constituents) are prominently featured. And remember that you are a voter and the expert on these issues – they want to hear your side, however difficult it may seem to get to talk to them. At the end of the day, everyone’s goal in this process should be to improve the quality of life for people in the U.S. and beyond.
For more tips on how to effectively communicate with elected officials, visit the ASCE Government Relations webpage and click on “Key Contact Program” from the list of Quick Links.
Your comment: