Win America increases lobbying efforts to repatriate offshore profits

Win America, a coalition lobbying Congress to allow corporations to bring back over $1 trillion in overseas profits, appears to be losing traction in Washington. President Obama Rose Garden speech did not address the issue altogether. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CNBC last week:

“We’re not going to do that, repatriation outside of corporate tax reform, because for the simple reason that it costs a lot of money. It costs between $20 [billion] and $80 billion to do that over 10 years, and if you’re going to do that, you have to be able to pay for it, and how are you going to raise taxes on the 96 percent of companies across the country that don’t benefit from repatriation?”

But endorsements from prominent Democrats, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, gives repatriation advocates renewed hope that a tax holiday can be happen  this year. The SEIU's former president, Andy Stern, has endorsed the idea.

Win America’s public relations campaign is run by SKDKnickerbocker, the PR firm that managed President Barack Obama’s election and is home to Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. It has hired ex-Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), the former ranking member on the Ways and Means Committee, "to lobby House Republicans and Mark Isakowitz, the former director of federal governmental relations at the National Federation of Independent Businesses, to work centrist Republicans."

"On the Democratic side, they’ve pulled in Jeff Forbes, former chief of staff to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction.

"The campaign has also been working with Let Freedom Ring, a tea party group that helped drive the Republican Study Committee’s Cut, Cap and Balance mantra.

Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, introduced legislation in May that would call for an immediate tax holiday allowing companies to repatriate overseas profits at a 5.25 percent rate. And Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) is considering whether to introduce a similar bill.

The team of lobbyists see three potential ways to get the job done: Get the super committee to take it up; include it with a series of expiring tax provisions; or attach it to the president’s jobs bill."

A 2009 Congressional Research Service study found “no evidence of a corresponding increase in domestic investment or employment” from the 843 corporations that brought back a collective $312 billion in 2004.