Business as Usual: Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC

Transcription: 

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And it's the last day of 2020 that we're going to have a show. And I'm joined here with Jonathan cursing vice president of all things, medium storytelling and marketing for the tech Council and all across the tech ecosystem. And I can't believe it, Jonathan, we finished a whole year. Cool. In cool, I'll be, I'll be happy to take a break. And I'm sure the rest of you will. And hopefully you're safe and sound and enjoying what the rest of the year will have to offer. But we're pretty excited about today's show, I will introduce our guests in one moment, as always like to give deep appreciation to Huntington bank, and for the work that they've done and continue to do in our community, to making sure that they have people have access to what they need to drive their businesses, as well as 40 by 80. That's the wholly owned subsidiary of the tech Council. It's our charitable 501 c three. And you're going to hear a lot about what we've been up to and what we will continue to do as we look to 2021 in terms of workforce development and entrepreneurship. So we're pretty excited about that. And now I want to bring on and just remind everyone that I've muted your microphone, so we don't hear any noise in the background, and he cheers, you can raise your glasses, or do whatever you want, but we're trying to be considerate of our guests. And this is not an opportunity for us to sell for you to sell your wares. This is a time to just be focused and focused on our guests I'm very excited to have and very timely fashion. Michael Sela he actually leaves Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney's federal government affairs team. And we're going to talk about things that are that are pretty hot topics right now. And hopefully, Michael will be able to give us some sort of inside baseball, but also talk about what's going to be happening over the next few days, and the next month in terms of the stimulus. So hi, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I'm glad to hear that you're safe and sound. And before we dive in, just tell everyone a little bit about your background, how long you've worked

in it. So first, happy holidays, and thanks for having me. And for those that decided to join this close to a holiday. On my extras all I head up to federal practice of Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney. I'm headquartered down here in Washington DC. For those that may not know Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney is a law firm. But we have a government relations practice, not only in DC, but Florida, as well as Pennsylvania. We have about 450 lawyers put in our federal government relations practice, we have about eight people. My background has really been in health care for the better part of the last 25 years. I've never really thought about it in 25 years until I have to talk about myself and it gets depressing. That and having an 18 year old freshman in college that depresses me, I'm on a whole nother level. But really, I've been involved with associations, the hospital association of Pennsylvania, where I head up there Federal Government Relations, some national physician organizations, clinical pathology, psychiatry, and within Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney, the the practices that I really deal with are anything across the continuum of healthcare. So whether it's long term care, acute care hospitals, tech companies that are looking to get into the healthcare space, as well as a lot of FDA work.

Out timeline, this is an exciting time for you. I'm sure.

It's exciting, crazy, either one. Either one work

well, good. So hopefully you are staying safe. And I know that you've been traveling and thank you for taking the time with us. So you do have a lot of experience in health care policy. So we're going to take advantage of that just by the way to give you a heads up. So during the past two weeks, let's just think about this the makings of a compromise, I've started to take shape. One talk about this, how it came to be and what you think is gonna happen over the next day or so.

So, right when we think that there's predictability in the process, something gets thrown as a monkey wrench, and I'll get to that last, when we talk a little bit about how this came to be. We all know about the virus. We all know that there's been an economic downturn, there's been stresses on every place that ever sees the exchange of $1, whether it's employment, whether it's restaurants, whether it's getting on a bus, or not getting on a bus during COVID. So we've seen all these different pressure points. Congress was very good quick to respond during the spring. And then really since the summer they've been working on a deal, and they really were philosophically on a few major issues, Democrats and Republicans were very far apart. I would say what, and I wouldn't say there was a one thing that brought them together, I would say there are a couple things. The first being the election had now passed. So people weren't worried about upsetting their base, they were upset about talking points, they felt they could negotiate their the numbers as a result of the election, got a little bit less than in the Senate and the House. And I think people felt they needed to take the opportunity with stronger numbers to move things. And then I would also say the Georgia election, believe it or not, we have two special elections out there. There's a sense of wanting to be able to show that the Senate and Republicans can compromise. Democrats wanted to move on this and take advantage before a new president and his administration come into office. So the appropriations piece of this bill, that passed was pretty much baked. I mean, for the most part, they had that done, and then we're using that to drag along the negotiations. And in Washington, DC, there's somewhat of a playbook for the most part. And I think for those of us who have been in DC for a long time, we recognize that we would have expected some bipartisanship, some senators to come together and try and bring the two sides together the way it happened. And then know you're gonna have Senator Manchin, who was a key architect in that. And that's a terrific booking by you guys. And he'll have a lot to say, I'm sure, much more profound than I. But I will say that, that leadership and bringing that together and working on it, and being able to get over the hump was really key in being able to do it, because it was senators that had a lot of clout. The monkey wrench in this is they had come to an agreement on certain stimulus checks. $600 for individuals making up to, I think, was $75,000 a year 12 $100, for a couple making up to 150,000, and then six, and then $600 per child. The President's not happy with that. He has long talked about how he wanted to see larger stimulus checks through this, but the democrats were under the impression that he was okay with $600 and 12 $100. Last night, he tweeted in a video that he wants to $1,000. And he may veto this package over that. Nobody was expecting that. And whether this is something that he is going to truly hold up this bill and veto. It's unclear. But what we do know is that Democrats are more than willing to go up to $2,000. They wanted more money. So Nancy Pelosi actually has asked for unanimous consent to pass this $2,000. And it requires Republican leadership in the house to say yes, to do that. So she's intending on bringing that up in the morning. And so the president really hasn't put democrats in an awkward position. He's put his own party in a very awkward position. And we can talk about why he would do that. I mean, people can speculate. Is he upset with Mitch McConnell for congratulating President Elect Biden? We don't know. And then the other is, I would say one of the other pressure points that made this happen was that court case after court case was lost by the Trump campaign. And people felt that it was becoming inevitable that Biden was going to become president, with each passing time that momentum drips down, and they felt more comfortable negotiating.

Well, what so what do you think the timeframe is for this? Do you think over the next 24 hours?

I believe it is, I believe in this, you have certain provisions that kick in on December 26. And they need to be able to deal with that they want to have this taken care of. But again, the President's playbook is the President's playbook, and nobody has access to it. So we just don't know. But I think

I'm sorry, were there any other changes?

That's the only one that he's calling for at this time. Now, we also know the President has a tendency to move the goalposts. So if he doesn't feel he's getting this, he may raise something else. I've always said these types of packages in December, lead to sometimes bad policy, because the rush to get them done. I don't think that was the case in this But the President may decide to move things and people may have to agree to things that they may not otherwise in the interest of time.

Well, what are the kinds of things that take effect on The 20 seconds or

two, they're certain. So the unemployment benefits are something that they want to make sure that they get through, they want to make sure that they take care of the evictions, moratorium. So there there are, I mean, the real implications of not having this done. And I think they recognize and I think the President recognizes that, which is why he's, you know, using this as leverage to try and get something more for the American people. And that's not me trying to be political. It's just the President's being very straightforward that he wants to see more money directed to individuals during during this time.

Well, I would imagine, the more you do that, there has to be some trading going on. To achieve that.

Um, there's, there's can either be promises for the future, or just complete caving, because they don't want to deal with it. You know, at some point, people are just going to say it's the holidays, they want to they want to see an end to 2020 as well.

You don't see there any changes might be in play in terms of unemployment, and some of the unemployment kickers.

Yeah, I don't think I don't think they'll change the 11 weeks to 15 weeks. I think, if anything, it's really republicans looking to change that number. And are they going to be comfortable with adding to the federal deficit or not?

So, you know, you mentioned earlier, and we're pretty excited that we confirm Senator Joe Manchin, who's going to be joining us in January, when we come back on our show, we're looking forward, obviously, to talking to him. And we're thrilled that he's spending the time with us. But we want him to talk about the coalition that he built to make you know, all of this happen. And obviously, we'll get some updates. So can you talk maybe a little bit about the the prospects for more bipartisan leadership, sort of after this this deal right now? And as we look to past January 20? You know, do you think that this is, you know, this really will be a time of bipartisanship? Or do you think that maybe with Georgia, things will change?

So let's take it from two different perspectives. First, let's take it from the administration to Capitol Hill. And I would say that we will see some deals done that are probably maybe one big, one big deal between Biden and the Senate, there's not going to be a lot. I mean, these guys are friends. But this is politics. Is there really any friendships in politics? You know, we've all taken knives out of our backs in politics from people we know. So I think I think we will see some deals, and I think we'll see some smaller deals, there will be a lot more communication. I mean, just yesterday, Mitch McConnell majority leader said that if they retain what he didn't say if they retain the Senate, but if they retain the majority, that he would bring all upper president like Biden's nominees to his cabinet to the floor, whether they passed or not, he didn't say but he said he would bring them to the floor. I think that's the beginning of showing signs of respect, quite honestly, something that he didn't show in bringing a Supreme Court justice to nominee. And I say that more from a process standpoint, where he talked about that was a democrat for President Trump that was a Republican. Um, so I think ultimately, we will see some a lot more communication than we may have in the past. Joe Biden has a lot of friends up there. He understands the process. Vice President Harris, or vice president elect terrorist also knows the way it works and has relationships. So I think we'll see some some more bipartisanship at least communication. Right and now within the Senate, regardless of whether it's a Republican majority or democrat 5050 with President Harris breaking that tie. We will see there to be more deals or more, at least within the Senate, more bipartisanship. You have Senator Lisa Murkowski. Senator Alaska, Senator Collins of Maine, who are Republicans, dates can go either way on certain votes and nominees. And you have Senator mentioned on the Democratic side, who's gonna who wants to be more it comes from a state that has red and blue and a very unique mix of red and blue. So I think those three right there, that's enough to force the discussions from going from this end to this end to more in the middle, right.

I feel like like some point, but it's good to hear your perspective.

And they're level headed people quite I mean, ultimately, what I've always said about a compromise is if everybody's unhappy, it's a good compromise. And, and I think we'll see more of that going forward. Now, the other thing that's going to throw a little bit of this influx is that we already have a 2020 election coming in two years, and people are already positioning for 2020. for president, you have Senator Rick cotton. You have Senator Justin Holley from Iowa, those are republicans are already starting to position themselves and be mouthpieces for a Republican platform. So how much they decide to hold things up? In the interest of positioning themselves for future run? is unclear.

Well, we have a couple of questions I want Jonathan to to grab some questions.

Yeah. So first one that came in on the private chat was, um, will they get rid of all the pork in this bill?

Not a chance. Okay. That that's at this point? That's not what's in contention. I mean, really, the key piece around this is those individual pieces of that individual stimulus check is the only thing that that rule right now has been raised by the President. And I think he'll be very loud about that. And we'll just have to wait and see, I don't think they can go back and make many changes to this, it would take unanimous consent, there are going to be senators and Republican House members that will object to certain things and democrats that will object to certain changes. Very cool. And

can you expand more on the fact that people are kind of some comments in the chat here? Wasn't the original veto proof, obviously, give us more details on that?

Sure. So it was veto proof. You had enough members that voted in both the House and the Senate, to over to do an override. But the problem being that that may not necessarily be the case, there might be republicans that now change their mind, or democrats that change their mind and say, I'm not going to vote for this because they want to see higher stimulus checks. And if it goes to a higher number, you may lose Republicans as well. So it may not be as overwhelming. Because, yes, this was a compromise. And if it does get changed, you're either going to win people or lose people in certain ways. And they may not be willing to do a veto override if they think that the President is now on board with a higher stimulus check.

And then we have one more, did you ask them all

that was just part of the response to someone asking that question in there in the comments that are so clear, absolutely. Good stuff.

Thank you, Michael. So let's talk about small businesses, about some of the components of the stimulus package, the stimulus package that, you know, our listeners, and our members need to be tracking down and attending to them in these next few days. Sure.

So I mean, part of the driving force around so much of the stimulus package, really, I always break it down into three main buckets, how is it that we can help kind of state government municipalities with different dollars and we can get to whether they achieve that or not, and then small businesses. And then individuals, so we've talked a lot about those stimulus checks. The small business side of this, the, I don't want $900 billion package, over a third of that is around the Small Business boost that they tried to create. So those things really came in various ways. They tried to change who, who could apply for a PPP loan, payroll protection loan, and, for example, see sixes were not able to apply before. Now they can, if they 300 or fewer employees, they changed how much of the C six component for those that are aware of the tax provisions, somewhat stems around how much lobbying you can do. And that piece of it, they change that from 10% to 15%, as long as you spend $1 million or less, so that's a big piece of this. They also talked about the unemployment piece of this. So by Quinto, Seymour more directly to the Small Business Administration, they provide a 284 billion out of that 325 was for those loans. So we know that that really did keep a lot of businesses afloat. Over the last several months. It wasn't always enough. As we've seen driving down the street, we've seen businesses that have that have shuttered but for a lot of people in a lot of the small businesses, it's allowed them to stay afloat longer, be able to keep people employed. And we're going to continue to see that, at least for a while until this money runs out. So I think that, really those small business pieces were helpful. They also talked a lot about the unemployment benefits, added. One, they wanted to make sure that people can get evicted. So they extended that eviction moratorium, they extended the unemployment benefits to $300 a week. And that's one of the pieces as we talked about December 26. So they extended that for I think it's 11 weeks until mid March. So that's important. So they're recognizing that I think with a lot of these, I think what's concerning to me is when is a good ending? Right, they talked about 11 weeks. I don't think any of us back in April, May, when they were dealing with these first revisions, felt that we would be in this position. I can tell you, I did not think I was going to be opening Christmas presents with a mascot. And I'm sure most people didn't. So is March enough? and seeing how long it took to get to this deal that we don't even have done yet, because of the President. You know, it really took six months. So are we in a position to say that in two and a half months, we're gonna be able to get another agreement? If we're still here? Yes, a vaccine is on its way. The government just this morning bought another 100 million doses. So we now have 15 million people that can get vaccinated. So I see that, yes, there's light at the end of the tunnel. If the vaccine works the way we hope it will, and has the duration of keeping protecting you from COVID-19. The way we hope it will we don't truly know the length. But I think, you know, for me, if I haven't injected in me, I feel a lot more comfortable walking down the street.

Yep. Well, good. That's good to hear that update. When is the eviction extension after

the eviction extension, I think goes till mid March as well.

Okay. And so Gina has a question, Jonathan.

Good one here. So

I'm assuming this passes by the end of the year? Are there things that businesses or individuals should do before the end of the calendar year, for instance, businesses, took a PPP loan, take advantage of the $5,000, employee retention, tax credit and so forth?

Well, I think you should hire Buchanan, Ingersoll, and Rooney to guide you. When he can't tell me that softball, holidays. So sorry, Gina? No, I will say this, I think, um, this is a 5500 page bill. And to be quite honest, I don't feel comfortable saying what you should do or not doing this situation. But I think that you after the last nine months, I'm sure you have accountants that you've talked to you've been working with, I would immediately because of the holidays, reach out to them, and say, what should we be doing to plan for this? What should we be taking advantage and start getting your paperwork together, because we know from the last round, this money will go fast. And so you need to be on top of it.

Well, and the other thing is, I just want to give an endorsement, let everyone know that we've been close to Kelly hunt, who's across western Pennsylvania leads the SBA. And so we will make sure that any information we've been in touch with her to make sure that we're getting all the information out that people need, but definitely follow what Michael was talking about, make sure that you're contacting your accountants and that you have all the paperwork in place, as well as your bank. And that's one of the things that's really important. And people had a little bit of a hiccup and delay with not understanding how tightly woven that process was.

So Audrey, the one the one other thing I would say is, um, and just to throw a resource out there, I have not read it yet. But in my mailbox this morning was a guide to the PPP for this round by the US Chamber. Okay, so I don't know if you ever relationship them, but that they have that kind of post they put together kind of a step by step of what you should be considering.

That's great. That's great. No, this is all we're here about providing resources. You can also reach out to Michael, if you want and we put his his info at the onset of the slide. And I'm sure you won't mind when people reach out to you Michael, though, it's the holidays. So anything just as we wrap up, I want to ask you something, you know, from state and local, how about anything from a state local perspective, anything that shouts out to you in the bill, and what about like the airport and the Port Authority. I know there was somebody allocation for airports and not having no layoffs, I read a few things there. What about the Port Authority?

So, um,

let me just share a broad question. The overall is that there is money that was directed towards a lot of different parts of whether it was the airports, transportation, workers grants. And I'll talk a little bit about some of those things. Overall, what I would say is, there's still not enough money that's being directed towards local governments, is my personal opinion. Yes, some of that's flowing through the state. And some of these things, we'll we'll address some of those local entities. But for the most part, I think, if you really speak, and I'm sure many of you do speak to your local government officials, they are saying that they're still having problems, and they still need some more direct funding. The pastor's through the state are going to be difficult. They're not always timely. And I spoke to a colleague last night, who I'm sure was real happy that I was making him text with me at midnight, to talk about this exact issue. But you know, he does a lot of work municipalities, and they're all clamoring that it's still not going to be enough that they're still going to have a hard time making budgets work, and they're still going to be hard decisions to happen. As far as specific things one, I grew up in Philadelphia, please don't hate me for that. All you people in Pittsburgh, I only have one Super Bowl, you guys have many. So. But I will say that Amtrak that runs across the state up and down the Northeast Corridor, they were able to get money. And we saw that there was $2 billion for bus operators and school bus companies. And that's a great thing. We started to see that there was a billion dollars in payroll for airline contractors. And this bill wasn't just about stimulus. This bill was also an appropriations bill. So as part of that they attached some other things to it, right. So we've seen things around disaster relief through FEMA, we saw that there was $10 billion for state and local transportation departments. But what we also saw was money directly for the airlines. I think that was $16 billion. Actually, when you look at my cheat sheet here, 14 billion for transit, 10 billion for state highways, 2 billion for airports, and intercity buses. And as I mentioned, 1 billion for Amtrak. One of the other things that we saw was that they're through the water resources act, W rd, a Water Resources Development Act, we, we saw that they opened up the harbor maintenance fund. So the Port Authority now is going to be able to access some funds. So that's really important for for those types of water ports. And I forget exactly how much it is. I want to say somewhere around 10 billion, I think, or 16 billion that's going to be spread throughout the country. And that's going to go a long way. But again, after this year, it's been it's been hard hit. So as you all know, individually. One of the other things, I think it's important for this group is that there was 10 million $10 million that was set aside for broadband. Right. And I think that's very important. Some of it was for low income people $50 a month credit to be able to access, but it's also for the development of broadband, throughout states to try and in some of that's for the education side. I have a student who's home working remotely, although I found her asleep during gym class the other day. Well, that was a discussion. But you know, I think I'm seeing that access is going to be able to provide more resources and throughout the state and especially in rural areas such as

well, Michael, you're the best for joining us on the day before Christmas. Jonathan, this was Episode 187. I would it is wrapping up here. This is our 87th episode. And I want to thank all of you who have been with us along the journey. Many people are out and we are not coming back until January 4. I've told him January 5.

Yeah, we have Southwest Airlines hanging out with us.

So we're not back on the fourth. I don't think so. I think it's the fourth that well, Jonathan, you can be off that that day. I'll be off that day then I'll

still be

one and if you need anything, don't hesitate to reach out to All of us but have a happy holiday. Be safe. And Michael, thank you for taking the time with us and giving us a live up to date on what's happening in DC.

Oh, thanks so much for having me. This was a blast and please, if you have any further questions, please just reach out. Okay.

Okay, always everyone, everyone.

Happy Holidays.

Bye. Thank you.

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