FPDA is a member of the Association Education Alliance and, as such, you are invited to participate in a webinar sponsored by another AEA member, NAHAD – The Association for Hose and Accessories Distribution. NAHAD is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 from 12:00-1:00 PM with the topic “Legislative Update: Issues Affecting Member Companies”, presented by Jade West of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW). The fee for any member company is just $10 per location, which will simply cover NAHAD’s costs of hosting and the toll-free phone lines.
If interested, here are the details you will need:
Jade is a well-known and effective member of the Washington community. She is in charge of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) legislative activities on Capitol Hill. She also serves as Executive Director of NAW's Wholesaler-Distributor Political Action Committee. Ms. West works to engage the legislative and executive branches of government on the broad-based association community’s behalf to affect the outcome of a wide range of legislative issues of interest to wholesaler-distributors across all commodity lines. This session will serve as an update to industry executives on the status of the most significant issues and will provide insight into what the immediate future may hold for you and your business.
If anyone has any questions regarding the e-Seminar, please direct them to mthompson@nahad.org.
Here are some of the issues and positions which Jade will address:
Despite the election two years ago of the most pro-labor President and Congress in decades, organized labor chalked up very few legislative victories in the 111th Congress. One of the first pieces of legislation the president signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Act dealing with the statute of limitations on pay discrimination charges (covered in a separate staff report), but that was both the first and the last major piece of labor-backed legislation enacted into law.
Other legislative items on labor’s wish list either failed to pass in one house of Congress or the other, or in both, or were never even considered. Among their failed initiatives: the Healthy Families Act, the Pay Equity Act, and OSHA reform (all covered in other staff reports). Their effort to enact a police and firefighters collective bargaining bill died on a vote in the Senate in the lame duck session last fall. And their top prize – the so-called Employee Free Choice Act – was never even considered in either house of Congress. But while labor had few legislative victories, the pro-labor assault on the American workplace manifested itself aggressively in the regulatory arena. And since labor will not see action on their legislative agenda in the GOP-lead House, they have greatly intensified that regulation assault this year.
The real threat facing business in the last two years has not been legislation, but regulation. The Obama Administration’s executive departments and agencies have moved aggressively to reverse the free market policies of the previous Administration, and to impose burdensome, costly and time consuming regulations on business at all levels and in all industries. Virtually all of the Federal Departments and agencies are promulgating new rules and regulations, many of them spawned by the banking reform and health care reform bills passed by Congress last year.
We believe the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will continue to be actively engaged in new regulatory initiatives for the remainder of President Obama’s first term. In mid-May, OSHA re-opened the public record on a proposed rule aimed at gathering data related to workplace repetitive motion injuries. In January 2011, OSHA had withdrawn the proposal from Office of Management & Budget (OMB) review in order to gather additional small business input. Publication of a final rule seems likely to re-ignite concern in the employer community about prospects for a more extensive ergonomics rulemaking.
Additionally, a proposed “Injury and Illness Prevention Program” (“I2P2”) rule requiring all employers to implement injury and illness prevention programs is thought likely to be promulgated this summer. OSHA indicates that the I2P2 rulemaking will “provide employers the tools necessary to find and fix their own workplace safety and health hazards. Moreover, this rulemaking is projected to enhance worker’s voice and participation in the process, as well as establish guidelines and require employers to implement their own process that proactively addresses workplace safety and health hazards and ultimately reduces workplace injuries and illnesses.”
As you know, LIFO repeal was included in each of the budgets the President submitted to Congress and the Deficit Reduction Commission recommended LIFO repeal in its December report to the President. Even more troubling, in recent testimony before the House Small Business Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner acknowledged that the Administration supports raising taxes—specifically including on some small pass-through businesses—to avoid spending cuts.
Critical to the discussion of tax reform is the question of whether we should tackle reform of just corporate income taxes, or of both the individual and corporate tax code. This is of immense importance to the business community because of the growing predominance of Subchapter S Corporations and other “pass-through” entities (i.e., partnerships, sole proprietorships, and limited liability corporations) in the economy today.
We look forward to you joining us for this informative webinar on the 13th!