Lobbyists Take Aim at the Supercommittee

Washington lobbyists, who usually spend their days and nights tracking the progress of dozens of bills and chasing after hundreds of members of Congress, will have a single place to focus their attention this fall: the 12-member “supercommittee” charged with finding ways to reduce future budget deficits by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Whatever you may think of this creation—last best chance for serious debt reduction, cynical political dodge—the influence industry looks at the panel and sees opportunity. “Supercommittee means superlobbying,” says John Feehery, who was a top aide to former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert and is now director of government affairs at Quinn Gillespie & Associates, one of Washington’s most prominent shops.

Lobbying firms representing corporations, nonprofits, and interest groups are preparing for an intense autumn as they try to keep the committee’s axe away from their clients’ tax breaks and government contracts. In better times, lobbyists measured their success by how much cash they could wring out of the federal government. Now they’ll consider it a victory just to hang on to what they’ve got. “To try and preserve the status quo, that requires a lot of work,” says Feehery, whose lobbying clients include News Corp., Sony, and Deutsche Börse Group.