Groups and businesses are pressing supercommittee members to spare them from cuts. Lobbyists swarm supercommittee

In just six weeks, nearly 200 companies and special interests have reported that they’re lobbying the 12-member supercommittee.

It’s a stunning ratio of lobbyists to lawmakers but makes sense when you consider the high stakes faced by interests ranging from the health care industry to Native American tribes. The groups fear the supercommittee will find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction before Thanksgiving by cutting their funding or raising their taxes.


Lobbyists have blitzed Washington, blanketing Capitol Hill with phone calls to lawmakers’ offices, launching multiplatform advertising campaigns and working to activate grass-roots bases.

The scale of the effort, tabulated by POLITICO in a review of recent federal filings, suggests that companies are taking the committee seriously and hoping to blunt whatever comes their way, even as hopes fade on Capitol Hill for a major deal.

“There isn’t much of an upside here in terms of what we’re doing. … It’s not like they are looking at ways to improve anything,” said Rick Pollack, a lobbyist for the American Hospital Association. “They are just looking at ways to chop.”

The lobbying bonanza could see an uptick this week, as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) — also a member of the supercommittee — is slated to release a draft of a new international tax proposal. Camp has been cagey about the timing of his bill, but Ways and Means GOP aides huddled in the Capitol Friday afternoon, to discuss the territorial tax bill.

It’s the first signal that the talks between Camp and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on the sidelines of the deficit committee could yield some results.

For now, the health care industry is leading the charge on the lobbying front, according to the latest lobbying disclosure reports filed late last week. Nearly 200 trade associations, companies and lobby shops working for groups such as the hospital association, insurance company WellPoint and drug manufacturer AstraZeneca are publicly disclosing for the first time that they’ve actively sought to influence the panel.

The AHA, for one, is carrying the torch for its members, arguing that they can’t take any more budget slashing after the health care reform bill slashed $155 billion from the industry.

Pollack said the group has been engaged in an advertising blitz and, traditional shoe-leather lobbying, and will have had two member fly-ins before the supercommittee produces a public report.

It’s not just health care companies. Representatives from the defense, transportation, energy, telecom and education sectors are also weighing in.

The airline industry, in particular, is engaging in a full-on lobbying assault as it tries to ensure that two revenue raisers in President Barack Obama’s jobs plan that would cost the industry $36 billion over 10 years aren’t included.

The Air Transport Association’s Sean Kennedy said they are particularly attuned to the supercommittee because the taxes were being bandied about in early deficit and debt talks and the industry has already lost about $50 billion over the lpast 10 years. Kennedy said “the threat of an additional $36 billion in taxes is really going to be a tipping point for a lot of carriers.”

Intensifying the lobbying is the nature of the committee itself, which has been tight-lipped about its plans.

“During my 42 years in Washington, this is the most closed-mouth committee that I have seen,” said Gerald Cassidy, veteran K-Streeter of Cassidy & Associates.

Members of the supercommittee and their staffers have largely kept a lock on what is being discussed. Even in private meetings with other lawmakers, their lips are sealed. Mark Prater, the panel’s staff director, and his deputy had dinner with bipartisan Senate chiefs of staff at Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill last week, and divulged little.

The little that’s known is not promising for a major deal. Both sides, according to aides familiar with the discussions, still cannot come to agreement on basic principles to guide discussions.

What has been presented is partisan and unlikely to pass — proposals similar to the Republican budget that was presented at the beginning of the year. In fact, on the health side, the GOP has laid down block-granting Medicaid, hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicare and other health care principles from the budget released by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Requests for comment from the offices of the supercommittee cochairs, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), were not returned by press time.

With the deadline just weeks away, both parties are getting nervous, particularly since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have stepped up their involvement in the committee. Some are looking at the paralysis, and cringing.

If the committee doesn’t reach a big enough deal, and the United States faces another credit downgrade, no one will walk away looking good, and serious damage could be done to the economy. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s does not comment on ratings decisions, a spokesman said, and it will judge the package when it comes out.

“This target wasn’t picked out of a hat — failure to achieve this deficit reduction would lead to substantial risk of a downgrade, which would have serious consequences for jobs and our economy,” a senior GOP aide said, speaking without attribution to openly discuss the party’s fears.

More broadly, Wall Street wants to see the system fixed. For many on Capitol Hill, tax reform would be the pinnacle of deficit cutting and signal a structural fix. A discussion draft of the international tax bill is likely this week, sources said. In the GOP meeting on Friday afternoon, Camp’s staffers made clear that the effort is going to be part of a broader tax overhaul. Details are paltry, but will include a mandatory repatriation of corporate money overseas, coupled with a separate provision that lowers corporate tax rates to 25 percent.

The draft legislation is likely to make its way to the business community this week.

Going forward, lobbying will boom if tax reform is seriously considered. Aides said some sort of tax reform by a date certain is looking more and more likely. The committee, though, will not mandate that tax reform generate a certain level of revenue but is likely to specify tax rates.

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