Public Policy - Federal

In today's fiercely competitive business environment, companies with access to sound policy advice often gain a significant advantage at crucial times in this era of rapid change. Staying in step with legislative and regulatory developments, knowing how to reach Washington's decision-makers with your messages and mapping clear strategies for affecting public policy are key to opening up new opportunities and creating success for your company.

The Public Policy Group at Baker Donelson can provide clients with long-term strategic counsel as well as day-to-day representation, helping to protect and advance clients' business through our deep knowledge of federal policymaking and its consequences for business. The Group was founded by former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, who also served as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and former Ambassador to Japan. The unique qualifications and extensive experience of our bipartisan team provides valuable advantages for our clients.

Baker Donelson was ranked among the top-10 lobbying organizations in the nation's capital by Fortune magazine in its latest survey of nearly 2,700 of Washington's key policy makers, including members of Congress, congressional staffers, senior White House aides and other lobbyists.

Our team is familiar not only with the substance of the law and policy, but also with government institutions and their personnel and procedures. Perhaps most importantly, they have credibility with the nation's decision-makers — a highly valued currency in the Washington public policy arena earned only through years of relationship building and honest brokering.

You can put our experience to work on your issues in a number of important ways, including:

• Counsel clients on lobbying laws and Congressional ethics rules.
• Providing accurate, real-time information gained through careful monitoring of legislation, regulation and extensive networking.
• Developing goals and tailoring the strategies best capable of achieving those goals.
• Producing effective advocacy materials, from hearing testimony and proposed amendments to funding requests and press kits.
• Shaping your message and delivering it to key decision-makers in Congress, the White House and the federal agencies.
• Protecting your interests throughout the legislative and rule-making process by garnering bipartisan support and counteracting the strategies employed by the opposition.
• Serve as your guide through the arcane and often complex procedures, rules and parliamentary actions governing the annual Federal appropriations process.
• Managing issue coalitions and communications strategies.
• Providing clients with business development skills and advice.

We know that achieving results on behalf of our clients requires bipartisan cooperation and strategy coordination, often in all branches of government. For that reason, we have built and continue to shape our Group by recruiting a diverse team of well-recognized Washington public policy professionals who have held senior-level positions in Congress, in the executive administration and in the courts.

We have experience helping clients in a wide variety of industries achieve their policy goals, including:

• Appropriations, budget and the federal grant process
• Aviation and Aerospace
• Banking and Finance
• Communications
• Defense
• Energy
• Environment
• Ethics compliance
• Federal and state election law
• Foreign direct investment
• Health Care
• Homeland security and emergency preparedness
• Information technology
• Infrastructure
• Intellectual property
• International trade and foreign relations
• Issue coalition building and management
• National security
• Surface transportation
• Technology Policy

Representative Matters

• Successfully lobbied Congress to secure more than $500 million in federal appropriations for airport security and detection systems. The client's product is one of only three whose technology has been certified by the U.S. government and is deployed at airports across the United States and in foreign countries.
• Secured more than $150 million federal financing commitment in a major expansion of one of the United States' largest airports.
• Helped small businesses gain entry to testing and evaluation programs at leading DOE National Labs.
• Helped a physician specialty client indefinitely extend their membership's billing arrangement through an emergency program memorandum from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
• Assisted a client in forging an agreement worth more than $30 million with the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to license one of its information technology products.
• Obtained a $21 million demonstration program with HHS and CMS to provide the first-ever pay-for-performance program in the history of the Medicare program.
• Reversed a pending regulation that would have crippled a major U.S. energy-related company.
• Provide ongoing assistance to several public transit agencies in obtaining federal appropriations for critical capital projects.
• Assisted a major manufacturer in obtaining a billion dollar science facility in Tennessee.
• Represented a major pharmaceutical company in its efforts with U.S. federal agencies including the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, regarding the company's product to address the chronic disease Hepatitis C.
• Assisted several corporate clients in the development and maintenance of Political Action Committees and in their compliance with federal election law.
• Modified proposed Congressional language that would have denied a client the ability to operate in the U.S. defense market.
• Assisted a major trade association in securing federal funding for training workers and first responders in the safe transportation of hazardous material.
• Introduced small businesses to new market opportunities in the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security.
• Under the auspices of the Howard Baker Forum, organized national conferences and produced special reports on energy policy, innovation, technology policy, and nuclear energy with leading trade associations and think tanks helping to frame national policy options.
• Developed and managed national issue campaigns and coalitions for a wide variety of clients and policy areas.