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CONGRESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT
KEYS TO SUCCESS
By Kurt R. LaFrance Director, Legislative Affairs, US Transportation Command
As the old adage goes, “with great challenges, come great opportunities.” This holds true when working with Congress to achieve legislative objectives. Despite the highly polarized political environment on the Hill between parties, and even within parties, it is still possible for executive branch agencies and US commercial entities to engage successfully with Congress to address common concerns. As members of the nation’s transportation enterprise, we all share a common interest in persuading Congress to do the right thing to enhance the governmental and commercial sides of the enterprise. Here is a roadmap for that success.
As anyone who has worked with Congress understands, the 535 independently minded members of Congress form a daunting institution. Understanding who works for whom, which committees have jurisdiction for any particular issue, and how members’ equities affect their approach to issues and legislation can be an insurmountable task, or at least a difficult one. Since members’ and staffers’ time are so limited, it is critically important to approach a members’ office or committee with full knowledge of their
Consistent messaging is the most effective way to make your case with Congress. That means all parties involved— industry and government—are telling staff the same thing. But be careful; building consensus within industry and government, then lobbying Congress for an expected result, is a clear violation of the Anti-Lobbying Act.
jurisdictional role and their ability and willingness to help.
First, there are three necessary assumptions, partly intuitive, but needing to be stated. Number one: every member has an agenda. The agenda may be parochial, in that it benefits the member’s district or a set of their constituencies; or, it may be altruistic, in the best interest of the nation or the jurisdictional boundaries of their committee work. In either case, it is necessary to know what that agenda is and how a particular transportation issue may affect it.
12 | Defense Transportation Journal | MARCH 2015 Second, in the end, after all the arguments are presented, it’s about the money. Even “policy” objectives in legislative proposals culminate in a spending issue for Congress—it’s what they do because that’s what the Constitution demands of them. For example, take the proposal this year to allow 100% disabled veterans to fly on space available aircraft, increasing the potential pool of Space-A flyers by hundreds of thousands. A majority of House members supported the policy proposal, but after consideration in the informal conference committee, the language never made it into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) due to potential, but unstated, costs.
Third, and most importantly, perception is reality. Let’s face it—Congress is ultimately a political institution where members vote on issues they believe their constituents sent them to Congress to advocate. Their response to those issues, based in fact or otherwise, will be the score on the test they must pass in the next election. Those of us dealing with Congress must understand if we are speaking to their perception or to their reality. The recent transition of USTRANSCOM’s Global Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) Contract
(GPC-III) to an untested company is an insightful example. While the contract itself was an unqualified achievement for the US government in terms of accountability and best value, early and persistent performance shortfalls called into question the decision to transition to a new contract. The perception among constituents (e.g., military members who suffered from that underperformance) that GPC-III was “a bad contract” led many members of Congress to form the same opinion. It took months of effort with staffers and members to reverse the perception that the contract was flawed. Transportation issues in particular pose a unique challenge for industry and government when dealing with Congress. Crossjurisdictional lines of responsibility create a complexity within Congress that requires precise navigation and an effective network in order to make the right contacts at the right times. Above all else, relationships matter; and relationships with the right personal and professional staffs are paramount. Elected members are the focal point within their offices and committees, but it is the staffs who advise them on what issues they should support and who develop the justification within their committees for moving that legislation. For example, it took nearly three years of fairly intensive staff engagement to secure the reauthorization of the Maritime Security Program (MSP), first to reauthorize the program’s existence through 2025, then to authorize a stair-stepping increase to the MSP stipend in the following legislative cycle. The engagement within Congress crossed jurisdiction in three areas—the Armed Services Committees, the Transportation Committees, and the Appropriations Committees in both the House and Senate, and required industry and government advocacy throughout the process. Personal relationships with staffers, particularly on the Armed Services Committees in whose bill the language appeared, was instrumental in its final approval. Get the staffers on your side, and probability of success increases dramatically.
Consistent messaging is the most effective way to make your case with Congress. That means all parties involved—industry and government—are telling staff the same thing. But be careful; building consensus within industry and government, then lobbying Congress for an expected result, is a clear violation of the Anti-Lobbying Act. Nonetheless, educating and informing Congress about the impact of proposed legislation, or proposing legislation independently, without any industry-government consensus, is allowed and part of the legislative process. Industrygovernment forums such as NDTA meetings, Executive Working Groups and others, are effective and resourceful ways to discuss issues of common interest.
MSP also serves as a valuable example of the importance of an incremental approach to legislation. Congress, by its nature, is there is no change to the BCA and prospects are unlikely it will ever be reversed. The same logic applies to transportation concerns. Many laws regarding the industry (Food for Peace cargo preferences, long-haul trucking policies in the Service Contract Act, Fly CRAF, etc.) have stood the test of time and are generally beneficial to industry and DOD. Any change to those laws (Firm Fixed Price cargo preference reduction to 50%) causes disruption within industry and requires an adjustment period that is often
reluctant to change existing law, and usually does so only after careful consideration and time for opposing views. When the cameras and microphones are turned off, the legislative process is a deliberate and thoughtful one in most cases. In that regard, it is usually beneficial to let Congress consider incremental changes rather than wholesale deletions and reinsertions of US Code. Building justification and support for a well-defined problem (e.g., authority to increase the MSP stipend over 10 years) within committees and with select members who have a vested constituency will increase the likelihood of success. For MSP, “targeted” engagement with members who sat on both the Armed Services and Transportation Committees was instrumental in achieving success, as they had strong equities for change in both their maritime industry and Defense oversight roles. Attempting to change large portions of US Code, or to add voluminous extensions, give detractors many more opportunities to oppose “good ideas.” Building a strategy based on an incremental approach over several legislative cycles requires patience, but is much more likely to succeed than a major policy shift in one year.
Since changing existing law is enormously difficult, it is important only to seek changes to law that will have the desired long-term effect. In other words, be careful what you ask for. When the Budget Control Act (BCA) was passed and signed into law in 2011, the conventional wisdom was that Congress would immediately change it when they realized that the resulting sequestration was too disastrous to allow it to stand. Yet, three years later, unpredictable. For the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) for example, DOD believes it needs no additional authorities to manage that sector’s support to DOD, so a concerted effort from industry in recent years to create a cargo preference in law resulted in some Congressional pushback. The only effective change to date has been the inclusion of existing Fly CRAF language from Title 49 into Title 10, with limited, if any expected impact. Congress wants to understand better the implications of changing a long existing set of standards before disrupting one of the most effective set of policies for industry-government interaction.
As we approach the “Year of Sealift,” and face daunting challenges in governmentindustry transportation relationships across the enterprise, engaging Congress effectively is more important than ever. Soon, for example, we will be making the case for Ready Reserve Force recapitalization, which may require a change to existing law allowing for purchase of foreign vessels and potentially increasing shipbuilding production within the US. The most effective means for success with Congress is to follow the guidelines above—speak with one voice, start with staff at the right contact points, think incrementally and long-term. While industry and DOD will not always agree on legislation or policy changes, using forums such as NDTA will allow for recognizing common interests which can then be successfully applied to congressional engagement. We define the transportation enterprise as all the entities in industry and government who perform transportation and
