WASHINGTON – Dan Mica, former president/CEO of CUNA, said the trade association should advocate for passage of a large regulatory relief package while supporting individual pieces of legislation at the same time, such as the bill to raise the member business lending cap.

Mica, a former Florida Democratic congressman, said supplemental capital and member business lending bills are long overdue. Both pieces of legislation have been re-introduced in the current session of Congress.

“It wouldn't hurt to have a large package but also get the individuals and wherever the train is leaving the station and you attach a piece, attach it. If you can get the whole ball of wax, great. If you can get one piece at a time, take one piece at a time. As Jim Nussle said this morning, we want some victories,” Mica said at CUNA's Governmental Affairs Conference.

Mica criticized the bankers for taking $60 billion in tax credits while standing in the way of credit unions serving their members.

“They are out there focusing on a few billion that we've had over decades of tax credits and they take $60 billion and stand in the way of us trying to better serve our members,” he said.

Mica encouraged CUNA to get more members involved in the legislative process by contacting lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“We've been around for a long time. We've got to get more members involved. We've got them signed up and educated and practiced to contact members of Congress,” he said. “Small credit unions are grapping for ways to meet all the compliance and regulatory demands and I think we are going to have to have new ideas to bring them together as groups and work with this as a unit problem instead of an individual problem and I think we can solve that problem. I'm working on it myself.”