By John Kamp, Executive Director, Coalition for Healthcare Communication

May 18, 2012 — Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told a group of senior advertising executives this morning at the AAAA’s New York offices that elimination of the deduction for marketing expenses remains possible, especially during the “lame duck” session of Congress following the November election.

“I wish I could tell you that you don’t need to worry, but the Congress needs to identify $4-5 trillion in combined spending cuts and new revenues,” McCaskill said. “With the deduction for popular items such as the home mortgage deduction on the list, you can bet relatively obscure items with be there, too,” she remarked.

McCaskill reminded the heads of the ANA, the AAAA, the Internet Advertising Bureau, the Coalition for Healthcare Communication and others that after the failure of the SuperCommittee to come up with the needed cuts, several “automatic triggers” will take effect on Jan. 1, 2013, that reduce funding for defense, Medicare, and other programs, as well as eliminate the Bush tax cuts.

The senator opened her discussion focusing on the multiple privacy proposals she said would “blow a hole in the profitability of Internet advertising business in this country.” She further opined that “neither the White House, the FTC, nor many senators understand how dangerous these proposals are and could easily vote for them.” She also noted that several private companies, including

Mozilla Firefox, are working on browsers that effectively “visualize” data gathering on a browser and how to avoid it.

For more information on this session, please contact John Kamp at: jkamp@wileyrein.com