A unified voice | Capitol HillCraig S. Brightup
The Political
Insiders Council (PIC) is the major donor program of NRCA's political action
committee, ROOFPAC,
and available to NRCA members who make personal
commitments to ROOFPAC
of $5,000 per year—the maximum donation allowable by law. The
council was established in 2005 and now has 20 members, giving
ROOFPAC
the financial support necessary for NRCA to be proactive on a number of
high-profile issues in Washington, D.C., not the least of which is
comprehensive immigration reform.
A compromise
The first Washington fly-in for PIC
members took place May 16-19, and the timing could not have been
better to have the maximum effect on the immigration issue in
Congress. In fact, it was on May 17, with PIC members gathered in
the office of Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), that the senator, who
until then had resisted immigration reforms advocated by NRCA, burst into the office
exclaiming, "The roofers are here, and we've got a deal on
immigration reform!"
May 17 was indeed a turning point in the immigration reform
debate as a bipartisan group of 12 senators led by Sens. Jon Kyl
(R-Ariz.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) announced a "grand bargain"
compromise immigration reform proposal that was quickly embraced by
the White House. Introduced as S. 1348, the Secure Borders,
Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 contains
three core tenets of comprehensive immigration
reform—enhanced border security, a guest worker program and a
method to bring undocumented workers already in the U.S. out of
the...
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