Sample Letter to your Congressmen. Copy and paste this text into your word processing program.

Date

 

The Honorable (full name)
United States Senate
Washington, C 20510 

Dear Senator (last name):

S. 256, the CARE Act of 2003, has been amended to give environmental groups an unfair tax advantage in buying and selling private property.  This is the President’s Faith-based Initiative legislation that was suppose to help the poor, feed the hungry and provide a hand to those less fortunate.

Giving environmental organizations and land trusts like The Nature Conservancy a tax advantage, when dealing in real estate, is not helping the less fortunate.  To the contrary, this amendment, Sections 106 and 107, seek to coerce more and more private landowners into selling their land to non-profit groups who will either lock it up and prevent it from ever being used again, or sell it to the government at a profit.

The CARE Act should not be used to line the pockets of these wealthiest environmental groups.  They are not the “faith-based” organizations that the President intended benefit from this legislation.  Land trusts will be able to reduce the price they are willing to pay for a seller’s property and still offer the seller more profit because of the exclusive 25% capital gains tax benefit the seller receives when he sells to a land trust.

Powerful land trusts will become real estate cartels driving out any competition from other buyers and will reduce property values.  The government already owns more land than it can manage and taking more land out of production and out of the hands of private landowners will destroy the very fabric of what made this nation great.

Owning private property and keeping it in production is what produces wealth and secures our liberty.  Do not allow Sections 106 and 107 to remain in this legislation.  

Do not allow the mighty land trusts to dictate land use in this country.  Allow the individual the ability to sell on a fair market and a level playing field and do not give land trusts this unjust and unfair ability to coerce landowners into selling their land.

Sincerely,

 

Name
address