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Presented by the Tax Foundation: Delivered daily, Influence gives you a comprehensive rundown and analysis of all lobby hires and news on K Street. | | | | | |  | | By Caitlin Oprysko | Presented by the Tax Foundation | With Daniel Lippman BROWNSTEIN SIGNS 5: In the midst of this month’s wrangling over cryptocurrency reporting provisions in the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, one of the industry’s newest trade groups enlisted the help of one of K Street’s top-earning lobbying shops, new disclosures shared with PI show. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck is the first lobbying hire by the group, the Crypto Council for Innovation, which was formed in April by the crypto exchange Coinbase, Fidelity, Square and Paradigm. — The team of lobbyists retained by the trade group to help fight regulatory headwinds in Washington includes Marc Lampkin, the managing director of Brownstein’s D.C. office; Norman Brownstein; Travis Norton, a former Senate Banking and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) aide; Al Mottur, a former Senate Commerce aide; Brian McGuire, a former Treasury official and Mitch McConnell staffer; and Elizabeth Maier, a former Jon Kyl staffer, according to the disclosure. — Crypto Council “came to us because we have a great team with great relationships on both sides of the aisle of the Senate, and this was a bipartisan issue that needed fast, smart, quick interaction,” a Brownstein spokesperson told PI. The provision at issue now appears likely to ultimately remain in the bill, but the firm believes there will be potential legislative vehicles this fall into which clarifying language to guide Treasury’s rulemaking could be inserted. — Brownstein has also signed one of its first defense contractors, BAE Systems, to lobby on Pentagon appropriations and policy. That team includes Ed Royce, the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as Sean Callahan, a former top aide to Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii); Nadeam Elshami, a former aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and Samantha Carl-Yoder, a State Department alum. T.Y. Lin International , an international engineering firm; Woodlands Township, a municipality in Texas; and digital learning platform Amplio also retained Brownstein’s services over the past month. Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Send K Street tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. | | A message from the Tax Foundation: How you pay for it matters. While Washington debates the best ways to fund an historic infrastructure investment, one little-known pay-for is flying under the radar. GILTI is a Republican-passed policy that President Biden has proposed doubling down on. The only problem: it doesn’t work as advertised. Learn more about GILTI, a foreign tax with a local impact. | | | RESTAURANTS REITERATE URGENCY FOR MORE AID: The restaurant industry’s top trade association continued today to raise alarms about the effects of the coronavirus resurgence on the industry, as restaurants lobby for another infusion of cash to be included in Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. — The rise in new Covid infections driven by the delta variant has prompted changes in restaurant-goers’ “dining behavior in a manner that is beginning to put acute pressure back on the restaurant industry,” Sean Kennedy, the National Restaurant Association’s top lobbyist, wrote in a letter to Pelosi, McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, citing a new consumer survey conducted by the trade group. The letter was also signed by more than four dozen state and local restaurant associations. — According to the survey, Kennedy wrote, one in five adults have stopped going out to restaurants, while 9 percent have canceled plans to do so in recent weeks. “For an industry that requires a ‘full house’ every evening to make a profit, this is a dangerous trend,” Kennedy wrote. On top of more hesitant diners, the industry is struggling with labor shortages, rising food costs and debt sustained throughout the pandemic. — The trade group urged lawmakers to replenish the Small Business Administration’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund created earlier this year. The grant program ran out of money this summer with 177,000 applications, or around two-thirds of the total applicants, still pending, according to Kennedy, who warned that “the small gains that our industry has made toward financial security are in danger of being wiped out.” CHECKING IN ON BUSINESSES’ RACIAL JUSTICE PLEDGES: “More than a year after America’s leading businesses assured employees and consumers they would rise to the moment, a Washington Post analysis of unprecedented corporate commitments toward racial justice causes reveals the limits of their power to remedy structural problems,” the Post’s Tracy Jan, Jena McGregor and Meghan Hoyer write. — Of the 50 biggest public companies evaluated by the paper, so far 37 “have confirmed disbursing at least $1.7 billion of the $49.5 billion pledged. Seven of the companies that provided data on their racial justice commitments refused to outline how much they had already spent. The analysis shows that public companies are devoting the most resources to promoting upward economic mobility for Black people, through increased opportunities for homeownership, entrepreneurship and education.” | | | |   | | | STOP US IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE: Yet another lobbyist with close ties to former President Donald Trump is under investigation for possible undisclosed foreign lobbying, The Wall Street Journal’s Byron Tau, Aruna Viswanatha and Julie Bykowicz report. This time it’s Barry Bennett, formerly of Avenue Strategies and a onetime presidential campaign manager to Ben Carson and unpaid campaign adviser to Trump, allegedly on behalf of his onetime client the Qatari Embassy. — “Prosecutors have presented evidence to a grand jury alleging that Mr. Bennett set up and funded a political group called Yemen Crisis Watch, according to the people familiar with the matter, as a way to embarrass Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., which at the time were enmeshed in a military campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen. That war has since left thousands dead and fueled what the United Nations described in 2019 as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” — The group “never registered with the U.S. government, as it would have been obligated to do under the Foreign Agents Registration Act if representing foreign interests. Mr. Bennett didn’t report that he set up and funded the organization, a review of FARA filings shows. Qatar gave Avenue Strategies $250,000 in October 2017 earmarked ‘for use in supporting the relief of humanitarian suffering in Yemen,’ according to a lobbying document.” The same year, an evangelical pastor and former Kansas Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer took up the group’s cause, placing op-eds and participating in congressional briefings after which Avenue contributed to Colyer’s gubernatorial campaign. HOUSE RULES PANEL DEALS CRYPTO A BLOW IN THIS ROUND: “House Democrats on Tuesday were poised to block attempts to scale back digital currency tax rules tucked into President Joe Biden 's infrastructure plan, in a new setback for crypto industry advocates fighting the proposal,” POLITICO’s Kellie Mejdrich reports. — “The House Rules Committee, which drafts the terms of debate for bills headed to the floor, agreed to a process that would prohibit any amendments from being considered for the infrastructure bill. The full House was scheduled to vote to lock in the procedure Tuesday afternoon,” closing the door to changes that could have included altering the language of new reporting requirements for the industry that its advocates, including sympathetic lawmakers in both parties, have called overly broad and potentially stifling for the rapidly growing sector. — “Crypto industry groups are now considering other legislative vehicles to revise the policy, after being blindsided by its inclusion in the infrastructure bill. One possibility is Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget package, said Michelle Bond, CEO of the Association for Digital Asset Markets. ‘The industry’s biggest test will lie in efforts to forge positive relationships in Washington,’ Bond said.” | | | | INTRODUCING OTTAWA PLAYBOOK : Join the growing community of Politicos — from lawmakers and leaders to pollsters, staffers, strategists and lobbyists — working to shape Canada’s future. Every day, our reporting team pulls back the curtain to shed light on what’s really driving the agenda on Parliament Hill, the true players who are shaping politics and policy across Canada, and the impact it all has on the world. Don’t miss out on your daily look inside Canadian politics and power. Subscribe to Ottawa Playbook today. | | | | | | | | — Patrick Martin has been promoted to managing director, the shareholder equivalent for lobbyists, at Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies. — Jesús Alvarado-Rivera has joined Anheuser-Busch InBev as global director for antitrust. Alvarado-Rivera was formerly a trial attorney at the Justice Department’s antitrust division. — Jeanine Poltronieri has joined the Internet Association as general counsel and senior vice president of legal and policy affairs. She was most recently assistant vice president of federal regulatory at AT&T and is a Motorola and FCC alum. — Tkeyah Lake has joined CTIA as director of digital strategy, per Morning Tech. She was previously at Betty&Smith and Banner Public Affairs. — Annaliese Davis is now director of public affairs for SKDK. She previously was senior communications adviser for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. — Gregory Michaelidis is now a senior adviser at Cambridge Global Advisors. He most recently was team manager of strategic communications for the public sector at MITRE, and is a DHS alum. | | | | Be a Policy Pro. POLITICO Pro has a free policy resource center filled with our best practices on building relationships with state and federal representatives, demonstrating ROI, and influencing policy through digital storytelling. Read our free guides today . | | | | | | | | None. | | | Afghanistan Accountability PAC (PAC)
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How you finance infrastructure matters. President Biden has proposed doubling the tax rate on GILTI, a little-known policy passed by Republicans in 2017 to discourage U.S. businesses from shifting profits from IP overseas.
GILTI is poorly designed. It doesn’t just tax IP, and it doesn’t just tax businesses that are looking to shift their profits into low-tax countries. GILTI unintentionally places a surtax on many U.S. companies that want to reach customers overseas.
Making bad policy worse. Whatever its intentions, GILTI is a flawed policy, and doubling down on it now will hurt us abroad, and at home.
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