Last week, I had the honor of joining more than 80 PPAI members in Washington D.C. for PPAI’s 9th annual Legislative Education & Action Day (L.E.A.D.). Over the course of two days our fearless delegation conducted over 300 meetings with the congressional offices of our home states.
The PPAM Team
Representing the Promotional Products Association Midwest (PPAM) along with fellow PPAM members, Brian Porter, Mary Dobsch and Christi Moses, I had the opportunity to participate in nearly 15 meetings with representatives from the states of Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas.
The PPAM Team: David Shultz, Christi Moses, Mary Dobsch, Brian Porter
The Issues
Above and beyond telling the unique story of our industry our goal this year was to focus on three talking points:
- Advertising expenses and the current rules for the deduction of those expenses
- Independent contractors and the impact of the safe harbor designation in Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978
- The notion of the global value chain, how U.S. workers in our industry add value to both domestically and internationally produced products, and how changes in the global supply chain impact the 500,000 U.S. workers this industry employs nationwide
The Results
By all reports everyone among our group felt that their meetings had gone well and that the staffs of the offices of the House and Senate with whom they met were engaged and interested in what they had to say. We all plan to follow up with our representatives and also try to schedule some site-visits during the summer recess so our legislators can see, first-hand, what makes this industry so unique.
2018 PPAI L.E.A.D. Representatives
Check out the video below for my personal recap. Thanks to PPAI for allowing me to join this year’s group in Washington! I enjoyed being a part of this passionate group of professionals from our industry and enjoyed gaining new insights into the process and all the hard work that goes into advocating on behalf of our industry.
Written by:
David Shultz // Vice-President, Operations // DistributorCentral, LLC
David is the Vice-President of Operations for DistributorCentral. With more than 17 years of industry experience David enjoys collaborating with his supplier, distributor, and business service provider peers to address technical challenges affecting our industry. He currently sits on the board of directors for the Promotional Products Association Midwest (PPAM), serves as a member of PPAI’s professional development committee and volunteers his time and technical talents to a variety of organizations outside the industry. He can be reached at david@distributorcentral.com.
