Montana Insurance

The National Federation of Independent Business, it was not necessary in every soul, research and debate on the health system.

Almost by President Clinton when the plan was announced, the pressure group representing small businesses knew what he wanted: kill the requirement that employers buy health insurance for their employees.

For months, the association splitterte far in the proposed Bill Clinton and his supporters. The group is organizing a meeting in Montana, to put pressure on Senator Max Baucus, and started an intense and costly phone and mail campaign against Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. The two senators are Democrats important elements of the Finance Committee.

The Confederation has also representatives cajoled WJ (Billy) Tauzin of Louisiana and has played with organizations representing Hardball Jim Slattery of Kansas, both Democrats, energy at home and the chamber of commerce.

Over time, they finished, the Federation of lobbyists have helped tie the Energy and Commerce Committee in knots, so he never finished the work itself a bill on health . And if the Finance Committee of the Senate approved a bill is deleted, that the employer mandate, the deep consternation at the White House was amended by the jubilation on the seventh floor of an office building halfway between the White House and Capitol Hill, where the association has its headquarters.

More than any other body unicellular lobby or professional association, the association may be credit or obligations for which there is increasingly unlikely that Congress approves mandates for employers, the requirement that companies pay their employees for health insurance in central M. Clinton promise of universal health coverage.

The Association conducted a 14-month war against this crucial element of the plan for the health of Bill Clinton, and with a membership of more than 600000 owners of small business is concentrated in rural areas south and west, it is d a huge force of legislation.

In addition to its impressive membership roles, small businesses Federation has learned that technology in innovative ways to help focus its resources on members of Congress. It is immense night Telephone organizes campaigns against the legislator, the day of the crucial vote.

“We have a decision on the fight against this health plan earlier than almost anybody else has done,” said John Motley, the organization of the chief lobbyist. “One of the things that allows us to be such a success is that we have our message, well before the voice of Calliope the question of the situation, we drown. Three stage of the strategy

The heart of the Federation strategy is simple: Step 1, decided by senators and representatives Swing-vote in committees of health care. Step 2, mobilize young entrepreneurs, are influential in their countries and districts and are ready for a Hard-Rock-message. Step 3, take people from Step 2, and they target people from Step 1

“There is no magic formula for this,” said Mr. Motley in an interview. “Our strength is that we have a large membership is that, in uniform, they Main Street businesses in this country struggling for doors open.

If this is a bad or very romantisant sight of the organization’s members M. Motley’s is a group that requires more attention on Capitol Hill than most.

Last Tuesday, two days before the finance committee of the Senate, the employer of an invoice without mandates, the domestic energy and the Chamber of Commerce Committee has intensified its efforts for the possible approval of health care. It was a serious blow to the committee chairman, representatives of John D. Dingell of Michigan, who had dreamed of playing an important role in the enacting universal health care legislation since a teenager and he saw his father, a member of Congress, that the failure venture.

A key reason that Mr. Dingell was the inability of his colleagues and Democrats in the committee to approve employer mandates. Digging early in the

It was shown that the first and the Federation of the Clinton administration would be hard opponent.

In August, at a meeting of the National Governors’ Association in Tulsa, Okla., the chairman of the planning was talking in general terms about the virtues of the health plan, it was expected to Congress in September.

But he found himself defending his project against taxes, grinding, small and medium enterprises, “said Motley collection, that the plan would, as the linking of small businesses to a sled and push a mountain, in the Hope, they remain standing. ”

Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat, is chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Public Health, has an idea of what the association. “They are greedy, ruthless people,” he said in an interview. “They are simply without social conscience.”

They are also effective in Southern and Western countries, where small businesses play an important role in local politics.

In the last 14 months, the association members stoked “problems with e-mails and faxes warning on the sidelines interested in Congress, forcing it to pay workers for their health insurance.

“Alarm Action!” started sending faxes and small entrepreneurs in Montana this spring, the invitation to support Senator Baucus to vote against the employer mandates. The embassy said the senator perhaps has forgotten what constitutes a new payroll tax would, Montana for small businesses and business employees: it is entirely destroy jobs Main Street in Montana .