ABMA Member Dealers Push Housing Reform, Credit Card Competition, and Pro-Small Business Rules During Capitol Hill Visits

Lumberyard leaders from Maine pose at the Capitol April 15 during the American Building Material Alliance's annual Advocacy Day. They are (front row) Tonia Tibbetts of Robbins Lumber, JoAnne Tar of Hancock Lumber, and Sadie Hammond of Hammond Lumber, plus (back row) Clara Collins and Sam Collins of S.W. Collins, David Gluck of NRLA, and Rod Wiles of Hammond Lumber.

Dozens of building material dealers and supporters enjoyed a rare opportunity to play offense on Capitol Hill Wednesday during the American Building Material Alliance's annual Congressional Advocacy Day.

Unlike past years, when ABMA lobbied against legislation and proposals that it felt hurt lumberyards, this visit's requests were to pass several popular measures:

• The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a package with dozens of measures focused on increasing supply in large part by encouraging regulatory relief and expanding home finance tools.

• The Credit Card Competition Act, which aims to reduce credit card swipe fees by giving companies more options for processing cards, thus eliminating the near-stranglehold Visa and MasterCard have on the system.

• The PROVE IT Act, a bill that helps small business by making sure agencies fully consider the direct and indirect costs those agency regulations put on small businesses. It also gives small businesses a way to challenge agency findings when those impacts are ignored.

ABMA Chairman Rod Wiles told the group during a prep meeting April 14 about how the alliance has enjoyed recent success.

"Last fall, ABMA released our Building Homes — Not Costs plan," he said. "The challenge in this country isn’t that we lack the ability to build homes. It’s that we’ve made it too expensive and too complicated to build them. Too many delays. Too many layers. Too many rules that add cost without adding value. So we laid out a different approach: reduce the cost of construction by addressing the real drivers — regulatory burden, permitting delays, and inspection bottlenecks.

"We brought that plan to Washington," Wiles continued. "We worked with the White House, with Congress, and with federal agencies. And a few weeks ago, the President signed an Executive Order directing the federal government to identify the regulatory costs affecting new construction and fix or eliminate them — the core of what we called for.

Now Congress is working on bipartisan legislation that goes even further. That’s why we’re here this week. Just like last year, we’re here to help move it across the finish line."

Roughly $100,000 worth of regulations "is baked into every home," Francis Palasieski, the Northeastern Regional Lumber Association's Government Affairs Director, told the group. He said many of the proposals being discussed in Washington today can be found in ABMA's “Building Homes, Not Cost” recommendations unveiled last year.

NRLA President Rita Ferris said that most of the 20+ years she has spent at Advocacy Days were devoted to fighting ideas percolating on Capitol Hill. This year was refreshing, she said, because "we have an opportunity to play offense." Versions of the Road to Housing Act passed both chambers of Congress with huge bipartisan votes, and President Trump has endorsed legislation encouraging competition for credit card swipe fees.

But Ferris added that the current climate in Washington "isn't going to last very long.” There's wide expectation that politics will be much different if the Democratic Party surges in November's midterm elections and takes control of the House and possibly the Senate.