“Today is go time for House Ways and Means,” Nussle said.

Nussle said AmCU members and lobbyists have been sending a stream of messages to the House Ways and Means Committee and its Republican members who are “going to sit with the chairman and draft this bill.” The flood of messages has included both positive messages about what credit unions do for their members and “irritant” messages that “140 million Americans would see their taxes increased if the Republicans or anyone decided to add credit unions as an offsetting pay-for to extend the Trump tax cuts.”

“I am cautiously optimistic that our messages have had a positive impact on the conversations today,” Nussle said. “There were meetings with individual Ways and Means members all the way up until Friday afternoon when they received the message to return to Washington for today’s meeting.”

On Monday, AmCU staff and paid lobbyists were at the Hill feeding information back to a “war room” at AmCU’s Washington, D.C., office.

“It is all hands on deck,” Carrie Hunt, AmCU’s chief advocacy officer, said. “We are well armed, well-trained, well prepared, and have been doing the work.”

Nussle said Smith’s meetings might resolve the bill’s ingredients, but the conversations could continue until the bill is completed and ready for the committee’s consideration.

AmCU is now executing its “stay-out” strategy to ensure that stripping credit unions of their federal tax exemption is not included in the tax bill as a “pay for,” that is a way to pay for the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts.

Even if the bill emerges from committee without a credit union tax exemption “pay for,” Nussle said AmCU plans to continue its “stay out” strategy “until the Trump tax cut is signed by President Trump in the Rose Garden.”

“We will not let up,” he said.

If AmCU fails and the committee’s bill includes eliminating the credit union tax exemption, Nussle said AmCU would “pivot and work on it getting out of the bill.”

Contact Jim DuPlessis at [email protected].