American Council for Capital Formation
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The American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) is a right-wing think tank and lobbying group located on the District of Columbia's K Street. ACCF supports "economic growth through sound tax, regulatory, and environmental policies."
History
The Council was founded in 1975 as the American Council on Capital Gains and Estate Taxation. Charls Walker founded the Council and installed himself as its first chairman. Seed money for the Council was provided by the Weyerhaeuser Company, a logging concern, and the National Forest Products Association. More than 340 firms and trade associations had contributed to the Council by 1984. Conservative foundations also issued significant grants. This funding allowed the Council to hire capable policy analysts, produce numerous policy papers, organize conferences, and otherwise promote its ideas.[1]
in 1978, Walker's group pushed a bill through Congress that greatly cut capital gains taxes. The Council claimed this would boost financial markets. During this time the Council's board included Democratic "superlawyers" such as Clark Clifford and Edward Bennet Williams and supply-side advocate Arthur Laffer. Robert Keith Gray, a powerful Republican lobbyist, served as president. The Council lobbied hard and released numerous economic studies showing the benefits of their bill. In his book Revolt of the Haves, Robert Kuttner wrote: "Many of these studies later were shown to be based on unverifiable assumptions about how the market was likely to respond to a cut in the capital gains rates;yet they were presented as scientific fact, and by the time the liberal economists reassembled their forces and challenged the methodology in the various tax journals, the political battle was over and Charlie Walker's capital formation council had moved on to other issues."[1]
Although the 1978 capital gains tax cut bill passed, the predicted spurt in investment never materialized. Walker argued that other economic factors were in play and in November 1979 he told the Council's annual meeting that the tax cut had saved the economy from yet worse troubles.[1]
Issues
Crude oil exports
The Council supported ending the ban on exports of crude oil from the United States. An ACCF representative said in response to the Obama administration's refusal to lift the ban: "The world has changed tremendously since the ban on crude oil exports was put in place over 40 years ago. That is nowhere more evident than in the transformation of our nation's energy landscape from one of scarcity to one of abundance." The Council hosted a policy briefing against the crude oil export ban in 2015. The briefing included about 40 experts and legislative aides.
Climate change
The ACCF pushed heavily for the Energy Tax Prevention Act in 2011 and 2012. This bill would have reversed a Supreme Court ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Margo Thorning, an ACCF economist testified in favor of the act. She stated that the regulation of greenhouse gases "makes little economic or environmental sense."[2]
Leadership
Charls Walker
Walker was the Council's first chairman. He served the Nixon administration as undersecretary of the treasury from 1969 to 1972 and as deputy secretary of the same department in 1973 under John Connally. Walker was born in Texas and educated at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received an undergraduate degree and an MBA. He took a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Walker was a professor, Federal Reserve staffer, and banking executive for brief periods before becoming executive vice president of the American Bankers Association in 1961. He retained that position until 1969 when he left to work under Nixon.[3]
Walker started consulting after leaving the Nixon administration. When he told Nixon that he was leaving government, the president said, “You’re going to be doing what you have been, but now making money at it."[1]Walker described the large companies he represented as "a few mom-and-pop clients." Over the course of his career, these included General Motors, Gulf Oil, and major airlines. Walker established the ACCF in order to provide credibility to his advocacy for big business.[4]
While defending the fully tax-deductible "three-martini lunch" in 1977 Walker said, “How could you set a ceiling that would apply both to a small town in Texas, where I recently bought a business lunch for two for $7, and to New York City, where you can pay anything?”[4]
Walker advised John Connally during his brief 1980 presidential campaign. After Connally left the race, Walker joined the Reagan campaign. Walker said of himself, "I think I provided the key memo." The memo he referred to offered a rationalization for cutting taxes and general government spending while increasing military spending. His other clients, such as the Business Roundtable, were relieved to know he was close to Reagan, whom they regarded as a potentially dangerous.[1] Walker and the ACCF won large cuts in corporate taxes in Reagan's 1981 economics legislation.[4]
His ACCF colleague, Mark Bloomfield, said of Walker, “Charly was the classic caricature of the cigar-smoking super-lobbyist with a limo." Lyndon B. Johnson called Walker “an S.O.B. with elbows.” Walker replied, “Where I come from, that’s a term of endearment.”[4]
Mark Bloomfield
Mark A. Bloomfied is the president and CEO of the Council.[5]
Bloomfield is known for the monthly dinners he holds for members of Congress, business leaders, and journalists. He has been holding these dinners for almost thirty years. Senator Joseph Lieberman called them "Washington's last salon." Bloomfield openly expresses pleasure at the fact that half the members of the House Ways and Means Committee have attended his dinners.[6]
Bloomfield authored the book Intellectual Property Rights and Capital Formation in the Next Decade with Charls Walker. It was published in 1988 by University Press of America.[7]
David Banks
George "David" Banks serves as executive vice president at the ACCF.[8]
While serving as an aide to Senator James Inhofe, Banks wrote an e-mail to energy industry lobbyists that was obtained by the National Journal. Banks wrote: "Moving forward, we—your partners—would kindly ask for better coordination and communication from you to prevent the Obama administration from pulling similar stunts in the future." Banks was referring to a proposal by the Obama administration to repeal billions of dollars of tax breaks that benefit large oil companies.
Funding
The ACCF relies heavily on donations from large oil companies like Exxonmobil. Since 1998, the Council has received at least $1.6 million from Exxonmobil alone.
The ACCF receives substantial support from Koch Industries. Green Peace documented $365,000 in donations from various Koch-controlled foundations from 2005 to 2011.[9][2]
References
- ^ a b c d e Blumenthal, Sidney (2008). The Rise of the Counter-establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power. Union Square Press.
- ^ a b {cite book |last1=Baer |first1=Hans |last2=Singer |first2=Merrill |date=24 April 2014 |title=The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Integrated Critical Perspective |location=United States |publisher=Routledge |isbn=1317817672}}
- ^ http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/charls-e-walker-tax-lobbyist-for-gop-and-big-business-dies-at-91/2015/06/25/51a8cff6-1930-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html
- ^ a b c d [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ [6]