Interning with Dow

by Evan Sarosi 
I landed a job in Washington DC in the lobbying/government affairs department at The Dow Chemical Company. Most of my work this summer has been related to regulatory reform, trying to amend the Administrative Procedures Act as well as other statutes that regulate the process by which agencies issue rules. The bulk of that work related to two specific projects. The first project required me to create an interactive federal regulatory database that highlights and assesses regulations that have a high impact on Dow. The second project was a Dow position paper detailing Dow's views on what the federal rulemaking process should look like including front-end rulemaking process rights and back-end process rights of judicial reviewability. I also had the opportunity to work outside the regulatory reform sphere in more of a public finance capacity as I was given the paired with Dow’s our head tax lobbyist to provide support in our efforts at tax reform. I attended hearings, drafted memos and proposals, and coordinated stakeholder lobbying efforts into broader coalitions. Obviously the debt ceiling has been hanging over everything and that has a significant public finance focus. As an example, this summer I attended a hearing of the Joint Committee on Taxation (the first full joint committee hearing since the 1940's) to assess the impact that the tax code's preference for debt financing over equity financing has had on over-leveraged financial firms (leading to the financial crisis). I drafted a hearing memo, submitted questions for the record and worked with tax practitioners from different firms to build a business community position with respect to the preferences for debt and equity financing.  The internship proved to be quite a fruitful opportunity and definitely one that I encourage other SPEA students to apply.