GE Lobbyists Mold Tax Bill

If written in the way the company desires, the provisions would add many millions of dollars to its bottom line. So GE, the nation's fifth-largest company with $134 billion in annual revenue and the largest by stock market value, put its substantial resources into action. It is one of the biggest players in the Washington campaign-contribution game and commands the most high-powered tax-lobbying team fielded by any corporate interest.

The result: GE is poised to win one and possibly both of its druthers and will benefit from many other provisions in the massive legislation. Still, more lobbying lies ahead for the company. The House and Senate still have to reconcile the versions of the bills they passed, and GE will have to fight to get all of its most-sought-after provisions.

Few firms are as well positioned. No company spends more on lobbying than GE, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.com -- $7.54 million last year alone. Its political action committee, through which it donates to congressional candidates, ranks in total donations among the top 10 of all corporations this year.

But GE's real strength is in information, not cash. Its effort on the tax bill illustrates what can happen when Congress throws its doors open to the business community on a highly complicated topic and an experienced team is waiting with all the answers.

The company chose carefully who devised and presented its tax policies to Congress and the White House. Unlike other corporations, GE's contract lobbyists do more than open doors so that its executives can make the case. The lobbyists are renowned in their fields and the company encourages them to function as much as advisers as pleaders to lawmakers who crave their expertise.

"They're very smart people," said Mark A. Prater, the Republican tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee. "Some of the smartest tax lawyers in the country advise them."

GE's tax-lobbying team includes people who have held virtually every important tax-policy position in Washington: a former assistant treasury secretary for tax policy; former chief tax counsels to both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee; and a former staff director to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress's tax legislative clearinghouse.

Three of Washington's best-regarded tax-lobbying boutiques are on retainer to GE: Capitol Tax Partners LLP, Clark Consulting's Federal Policy Group, and Washington Council Ernst & Young.

Those are just GE's hired lobbyists. Its corporate tax staff is headed by John M. Samuels, who was a tax legislative counsel in President Jimmy Carter's Treasury Department. Several other staffers at GE's Connecticut headquarters also are veterans of the international tax division at the Treasury Department.

GE's Washington office also includes former senior aides to two former chairmen of the Senate Finance Committee -- Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.). The new office head, Nancy P. Dorn, recently left the White House, where she was a deputy budget office director and previously was a foreign policy aide to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).