With Dana Nickel, Daniel Lippman CAPITOL COUNSEL ADDS TAX EXPERTISE: Capitol Counsel has beefed up its tax practice ahead of next year’s tax bonanza. Adam Carasso has joined the firm as a partner after spending the past two years as the top tax lobbyist for manufacturer Corning, Inc., where he helped secure hundreds of millions of dollars in grants or other benefits for the company under the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act. — Prior to his time at Corning, Carasso worked on the Hill for more than a dozen years, most recently as a senior tax and economic adviser to the two most recent Democratic leaders on the Senate Finance Committee — current Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and former Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — and worked on major pieces of legislation including the coronavirus relief packages and the IRA. Carasso also served as the chief Democratic economist for the House Budget Committee. — Earlier this summer, the firm made another key addition to its tax practice, bringing on longtime tax reporter-turned-lobbyist Jay Heflin as a principal. Heflin covered tax policy for more than a decade before joining Federal Policy Group. Most recently, he did a stint as a business editor for the Washington Examiner and then served as director of tax legislative affairs for an accounting firm. — Both Carasso and Heflin will work with the firm’s existing tax team, which is led by David Olander, in the hopes of helping clients navigate tax negotiations by a Congress that is sure to be narrowly divided regardless of how November’s elections turn out. FORMER BIO EXEC TO LEAD GENERICS LOBBY: The Association for Accessible Medicines, the main industry group for generic drugmakers, has a top former official from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization to be its next president and chief executive after nearly two years without a permanent head. — John Murphy, who will join AAM next month, spent more than a decade at the biotech lobby overall, most recently serving as BIO’s chief policy officer and health care counsel before being laid off with around 30 others as part of a “restructuring” this spring. In addition to his time working at BIO, Murphy also did a three-year stint with one of the other premier pharmaceutical lobbies in town, PhRMA. — Murphy joins AAM after a turbulent few years for the drug industry. His predecessor at the generics lobby, Dan Leonard, was pushed out of his role at the end of 2022, following the industry’s failure to block Democrats from passing drug pricing reforms in the IRA. — At the time, BIO’s chief executive had stepped down weeks earlier, and PhRMA had begun an overhaul of its top staff as well. AAM also faced a budget crunch and layoffs at a key time for the generics industry, POLITICO reported last year. — After dropping nearly $3.2 million on federal lobbying in 2022, AAM spent just over $2 million on lobbying last year. Through the first half of 2024, the trade group has reported $1.1 million in lobbying expenditures. Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI. Send lobbying gossip, rumors, tips or complaints: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. BUILD ME UP: A coalition of leading sustainable building groups issued its 2025 policy agenda for the next presidential administration aimed at helping commercial buildings recover from challenges brought on by Covid-19. — The New Buildings Institute, Carbon Leadership Forum, Institute for Market Transformation and the U.S. Green Building Council worked together to develop the agenda. — The agenda calls for the expansion of Sec. 48E Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit to cover investments in energy efficiency. Currently, the ITC covers electricity-generating technology only, such as on-site solar. Expanding the ITC, according to a statement from the groups, would help construct this technology in retrofitting commercial buildings. — The groups added that the agenda would provide parity under the current tax code for energy efficiency as the ITC transitions to a technology-neutral structure in 2025. These recommendations would also help the U.S. reach clean energy targets by reducing demand on the grid. — “At this critical time, federal investment to improve building performance, efficiency and resilience can protect health and the environment, decarbonize our buildings, enhance productivity, prepare us for the future and create jobs at every skill level,” said IMT CEO Alex Dews. GET THAT ROI: “The private equity firm run by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, has been paid at least $112 million in fees since 2021 by Saudi Arabia and other foreign investors, even though as of July it had not yet returned any profits to the governments largely bankrolling the firm,” The New York Times’ Eric Lipton reports, according to “the findings of a Senate Finance Committee inquiry into the operations of Affinity Partners, the Miami-based firm Mr. Kushner set up.” ALPINE NAMES NEW CEO: Keenan Austin Reed has been named as the new CEO of the Alpine Group. Reed succeeds current chief executive and managing partner Les Spivey, who’s transitioning to the role of president. Reed joined the firm in 2021 after serving as chief of staff to the late Rep. Don McEachin (D-Va.). She previously was deputy chief of staff to Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.). WYNN LOOPHOLE FIX GETS HUNG UP: With Congress heading out of town later today until after the election, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Tuesday made a last-ditch effort to advance a bipartisan bill to address what’s become known as FARA’s “Wynn loophole.” — Grassley asked for unanimous consent to pass the Retroactive Foreign Agents Registration Act, which would clarify that agents of a foreign principal have a continuing obligation to register under FARA, even when that work has ended. The bicameral bill has nearly two dozen sponsors between both chambers of Congress. — That technicality stems from a longstanding appeals court precedent that in 2022 blocked the Justice Department from forcing casino magnate Steve Wynn to register as a foreign agent for work that had ended years ago. Grassley’s legislative fix to FARA, he said in a floor speech, is “necessary to give it teeth that it needs to be effective.” — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), however, objected to the bill, calling instead for a committee markup of the legislation, which he argued could be unfairly used to criminalize advocacy or political speech for what in effect is a paperwork violation. — “What was once considered a mistake that could be recently rectified simply by encouraging voluntary compliance is now a weapon that can be used to silence dissent by threatening individuals with prison times,” he said, pointing to the surging number of criminal FARA cases (of which Wynn’s, it should be noted, was not one). D.C. MONEY: A super PAC aiming to unseat Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer while attacking her for her ties to Washington is largely funded by a D.C. Democratic group and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Gabe Kaminsky reports for the Washington Examiner. — Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety “has spent $432,000 on ads opposing” Fischer while “boosting Dan Osborn, a U.S. Navy veteran and industrial mechanic running as an independent, according to Federal Election Commission filings. But none of the PAC’s public war chest appears to have actually come from donors in the Cornhusker State.” — “The giving from Hoffman, Sixteen Thirty Fund, and Retire Career Politicians made up roughly 71 percent of all donations to Nebraska Railroaders for Public Safety between November 2023 and June of this year, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of federal records. The PAC launched last fall, statement of organization documents show.” SWIPE FEE FOES DOUBLE DOWN: Advocacy groups on either side of the fight to clamp down on credit card swipe fees dug in on Tuesday after the Justice Department hit Visa with an antitrust lawsuit challenging the payment giant’s dominance of the debit card market. — “The CFPB and Department of Transportation have already been weaponized against payment networks. Now it seems, as CFPB Director [Rohit] Chopra has said, ‘this is an all of government’ crusade,” said Richard Hunt, the executive chair of the finance industry coalition Electronic Payments Coalition, of which Visa is a member. — Hunt went on to be the devil’s advocate, arguing that Sen. Dick Durbin’s (D-Ill.) Dodd-Frank-era debit card swipe fee push was not successful in injecting more competition into the industry if DOJ is to be believed, and therefore should undermine Durbin’s current credit card swipe fee crackdown alongside Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). — The Merchants Payments Coalition, which represents retailers, proclaimed that the suit, while focused on debit cards, “shows how we desperately need competition over credit card swipe fees, which currently face no competition at all,” according to spokesperson Doug Kantor. TOP-ED: FEC Chair Sean Cooksey is reflecting on Mitch McConnell’s legacy in the campaign finance world ahead of McConnell’s last election as Senate GOP leader, writing in an op-ed for Fox News Digital that while McConnell “may have lost a few fights during his tenure, I believe he ultimately won the campaign finance wars.” — Cooksey invokes former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, contending that McConnell’s fights over political speech embody Thatcher’s “aphorism that you may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. America’s democracy and constitutional freedoms are better off because he did.” SPOTTED at U.S. News & World Report’s 90th anniversary celebration at Fiola, per a tipster: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Reps. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel, Heather Podesta and Kate Bennett of Invariant, Amanda Finney of the Energy Department, Eric Gertler, Olivier Knox, Dafna Linzer, Indira Lakshmanan and Bill Holiber of U.S. News & World Report, Neal Katyal of Hogan Lovells, Rick Wade of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Adam Bramwell and Allen Jamerson of SK Group and Lester Davis of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. — And at a reception hosted by the American Hotel & Lodging Association during its congressional fly-in, per a tipster: Sens. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Klobuchar; Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Andy Harris(R-Md.), Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), Carol Miller (R-W.Va.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Michael Rulli (R-Ohio), Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and Tim Walberg (R-Mich.). — And at Americans for Prosperity’s 20th anniversary gala at the Watergate Hotel: House Speaker Mike Johnson, Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Reps. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), Beth Van Dyne (R-Texas), John Duarte (R-Calif.), Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Norman and McCormick.
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