Bruce Kesler on big tourism depends on K Street pr whiz

A former Freddie Mac public relations guru who helped generate the mortgage meltdown that sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin last year is behind this year's campaign by Walt Disney, Anheuser Busch, American Express, Orbitz and other corporate heavyweights to charge foreign travelers and U.S. taxpayers to subsidize advertising for their already immensely profitable industry.

Heart of the proposal is a $10 per-entry fee charge on foreign visitors to the U.S., with up to $100 million of the resulting revenue being used to fund a new entity known as the Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP) associated with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Taxpayers would put up $10 million in start-up funding for the CTP and its board of directors would be named by the Secretary of Commerce, drawn from travel industry executives. The Commerce Department would get 25 new employees and an $80 million boost to its personnel budget as a result.

For camouflage, the proposal allows the tourism industry to hold a voluntary referendum whether it is to be assessed a "matching" contribution of 20% of the entry fees collected. That would mean smaller tourism industry members who cater to domestic visitors would subsidize the biggies who cater to foreign visitors.

In 2007 and 2008, I wrote several blog posts and then an op-ed in the Examiner about this effort by the corporate tourism executives to force U.S. taxpayer and foreign visitors to this country to pay for overseas marketing and promotion of an already profitable industry.

The Examiner's Tim Carney further exposed the K Street lobbying connection behind this effort. Then, in February 2008, Jeff Birnbaum, who was then covering the lobbying industry for The Washington Post, blew the lid off this scam in an almost 7,000 word in-depth article.

"A lobbying machine, once it gets started, cannot stop," Birnbaum said. And sure enough, despite all the negative coverage it received before and opposition from the Bush administration, this one hasn't stopped moving forward. Gary Locke, President Obama's Commerce Secretary, supports the bill and just this Monday, the U.S. Senate approved it.

The public relations executive behind the tourism industry campaign is Geoff Freeman, senior vice president for public affairs for the U.S. Travel Association. Freeman's self-described specialty is "developing innovative outreach techniques to increase support among unlikely allies."

He seeks to "flip the table and change the environment," which is exactly what he's done for the tourism industry. In 2007-2008, his campaign for the fee was based on a false claim of diminished travel to the U.S. following 9/11. That claim, by the way, was flatly contradicted by government and industry statistics.

Now, with public concern high for deepening federal deficits, Freeman's argument is that the travel fee is a deficit reduction measure because it will produce new revenue for the government, even though it will mean higher travel costs for consumers and lead to more government.

Guess what Freeman was doing before he went to work for the tourism industry. He was director of government relations and strategic outreach for Freddie Mac where, according to Freeman, he "developed and implemented an innovative program to highlight the corporation's activities in local markets."

In that position, he "teamed with local stakeholders and elected officials to celebrate newfound homeownership opportunities presented to millions of Americans across the country." In other words, he helped sell the idea that people who were poor credit risks should get government-guaranteed mortgages. We know how that story ended.

Visitation to the U.S. is down, due to the global economic meltdown, but so is visitation to Europe and elsewhere. This travel industry visitor from K Street, however, seeks to travel high.

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