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President's Message

Joining the Political Process:
We are Not Giving Until it Hurts, But it Still Hurts

My first message to you as President of Division 42 will very much resemble my last –- as well as the ones in between – calling your attention to the urgent need for the rank and file of our members to make regular, political contributions. The critical tie between access to lawmakers and political giving is obvious to every other health profession but appears to have largely escaped psychologists. Instead of giving until it hurts, we are not giving and that hurts too! We have never been significant political contributors and show no signs of changing. The result of our neglect is that no one of note on Capital Hill pays much attention to what we have to say about the public need for access to our services or our thoughts on reforming the nation’s health care system, or a host of other matters of vital importance to us and to society.

We whine to anyone who will listen that society ignores our sage advice and help. We complain about how little APA does for practice. We rail against the economic forces that have ravaged our incomes and way of life. All while steadfastly refusing to exercise the one tool that might offer help for some redress: political influence. Political influence requires political giving. It is that plain and that simple. Social workers, nurses, physical therapists, optometrists, podiatrists, dentists, and physicians are among the many health professions that make larger per capita contributions than we do. Psychology ranks among the lowest of all major health professions in political giving. It has been so for decades and yet we have refused to change –until now.

If we and our 40,000 special assessment colleagues were to contribute just 15 cents a day we could raise over $2 million a year or 20 times what we now give! Twenty times our current level of giving for 15 cents a day! That level of giving would transform us from one of the smallest to the second largest health care PAC in the US and make a real difference in getting our message to key legislators.

Until now, organizational barriers attributable to our tax status and our history contributed heavily to our pecuniary behavior. But recent changes approved by the Council of Representatives has allowed the APA Practice Directorate and our only national psychology PAC, the Association for the Advancement of Psychology (of which I am Chair), to conclude an affiliation agreement that will remove most of those barriers and allow AAP to bring its message about the need for political giving to more of our rank and file members. We now have the needed organizational mechanisms in place to become a first class professional political organization. All that remains is for our members to respond by opening their pocketbooks –and paradoxically, they will not have to open them very wide if most of them will do it! As little as twelve to fifteen cents a day –about $1 a week would do it! The key is participation by the many rather than pain for the few. How can you and our friends and colleagues in psychology not respond if the case is put before them?

During the coming year, I will be working with the leadership of the Division to find ways to inform our members about our needs and the critical gap between those needs and what we now have available. We will be looking for funds to work our profession’s practice agenda. We need to be writing our own agenda, proposing our own solution and helping make things happen that will enable us to bring our services to those who need them in the most efficient and effective manner. We can only begin to do that if we are successful in getting important leaders in Congress to listen to us and to talk with us about the problems. To get them to listen, we need to get their attention and that means money. Not an impossible amount, but far more than we now have ---and the cost per person is really very low.

Your can help in several ways: 1. When you are solicited by AAP for political gifts, respond. 2. Recruit your colleagues to do the same. 3. Send me your ideas and suggestions about what messages psychology most urgently needs to bring to the attention of congressional leaders. Division 42 needs to help set APA’s legislative agenda for practice and we need to help raise the money to see to it that our agenda gets heard in Congress. We can do this thing. All we need is a little help from our friends. Starting with you!

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