Amid the heightened rhetoric over the role that foreign money may be playing in the 2010 elections, there have been few voices willing to defend the role that international corporations play in the U.S. political process. Behind the scenes, however, there has been at least one lobby shop working with politicians to try to add nuance (and a layer of political shelter for those companies) to the conversation.
The Organization for International Investment (OFII) is business association based in Washington D.C. that represents U.S. subsidiaries of companies headquartered abroad -- or what it terms "insourcing companies." And as the focus sharpens on the possibility that foreign companies have used the Chamber of Commerce as a conduit for campaign donations, it's been handed the difficult task of drawing lines of distinctions.
"This issue cannot be as easily carved out as it might have been 20 or 30 years ago. There is such a thing as passive foreign investment," Nancy L. McLernon, president & CEO of OFII. "Just because the company is headquartered somewhere else in the world doesn't mean the political rights of the American employee should be challenged."
The case OFII makes in its meetings with staffers on the Hill and officials in the White House is that it's dangerous to lump the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations into the same grouping as foreign corporations themselves. Companies like Anheuser Busch and Toyota may be headquartered overseas. But they have offices in the United States that employ thousands of workers and, as such, have legal rights to participate in the electoral process. When politicians try to restrict that participation -- or when the Chamber is accused of using foreign money to run ads in the 2010 cycle -- it falls on OFII to defend Anheuser Busch and Toyota. Usually the group does this by making high-minded arguments against the perils of knee-jerk politicking.
"It is very disappointing that, in the current political climate and economic climate, that some politicians are trying to play the foreign card and at the end of the day discourage these companies from being here," McLernon said. "Around the Davos water cooler, CEOs of these companies hear this and say, 'Why the heck should I put my money there?' And for this conversation to happen in 2010, it shows a lot of ignorance of how [the economy works]."
But the tasks the association faces are far more technical and targeted then merely pitching the benefits of insourcing and globalization. When Think Progress put up its initial post on the Chamber's funding, OFII was quick on the phone asking that the liberal blog "clarify that they are not talking about U.S subsidies of foreign companies and the 5.5 million Americans that work for them." The site did note that it was not "disputing the legally permissible contributions from U.S. operations of foreign companies that may be used for political activities."
Of higher stakes, was a letter that 15 Democratic Senators wrote to the FEC, asking that the commission adopt stricter guidelines about campaign activity "to account for the explosive growth of foreign investment in the American economy, and the increasing portion of U.S.-based firms that are controlled, if not wholly owned, by foreign corporations and governments."
There was, McLernon said, a "guttural negative reaction to the letter." OFII reached out directly to each Senate office, encouraging them to recognize that foreign companies can set up political action committees for their domestic subsidiaries. And if that weren't enough they took the step of pointing out that signatories of that letter had, over the course of their careers, received more than $1.2 million in donations from U.S. subsidiary PACs, according to Center for Responsive Politics data.
"The concern of foreign influence in the political systems is sort of an evergreen issue,' said McLernon, before noting that way back in 1990, lawmakers were encouraging the FEC to consider banning the political action committees of American subsidiaries. "It ends up leaving a lot of embarrassed policy makers who unfortunately speak before they look carefully at what they are talking about."