COVID-19 Relief Funding & Reopening America: What's Really Happening in Congress

James Barresi leads Squire Patton Boggs’ global Financial Services Practice. His practice is focused on corporate finance, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, complex investments and related regulatory issues. Representative clients include commercial, investment and merchant banks, specialty finance companies, private equity and debt funds and other alternative investors. Jim also advises corporations in cross-border financing and strategic transactions.

Immediately prior to joining the firm, Jim served as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of one of the largest and most acquisitive bank holding companies in the US.

Jim has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America each year since 2007 and was recently named an Acritas Star in the inaugural global ratings published by Acritas, an independent research and ratings firm that serves corporate legal departments.

Joe Manchin III (Democratic Party) is a member of the U.S. Senate from West Virginia. He assumed office on November 15, 2010. His current term ends on January 3, 2025.

Manchin (Democratic Party) ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent West Virginia. He won in the general election on November 6, 2018.

Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Manchin served as the governor of West Virginia from 2004 to 2010, as the West Virginia Secretary of State from 2000 to 2004, in the West Virginia State Senate from 1986 to 1996, and in the West Virginia House of Delegates from 1982 to 1986. In 2010, he was chairman of the National Governors Association.[1]

At the start of the 116th Congress, Manchin was the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and a member of the Senate committees on Armed Services, Appropriations, Veterans' Affairs, and the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans.

Manchin graduated from Farmington High School and then entered West Virginia University on a football scholarship in 1965. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in business administration. He then became involved in several family-owned businesses before launching his political career.

Karol K. Denniston is a member of the Global Board and an experienced restructuring lawyer. Karol has a strong interest in negotiated restructurings and has been a mediator since 1992. Karol is a member of the firm’s Advancing Women Task Force.

Karol has been working in the distress municipal sector since 2009 and routinely represents cities, special districts, indenture trustees, bondholders, taxpayers and monoline insurers in a variety of municipal restructuring engagements throughout the US. She has represented clients in municipal insolvency proceedings with a focus on negotiating resolutions, including in Puerto Rico PROMESA restructurings for the Government Development Bank and COFINA. The Legal 500 has designated Karol as a municipal restructuring Leading Lawyer.

Described by The New York Times as a “King of K Street,” Ed Newberry is the global managing partner of the Public Policy Practice, Investigatory and Regulatory Solutions and is a member of the firm’s Executive Leadership Group.

Trained by the legendary lobbyist Tommy Boggs, Ed is widely recognized as one of the leading lawyer-lobbyists in Washington DC. He is ranked as a Leading Lawyer by The Legal 500, which noted he “is one of the most talented lawyers in Washington,” as well as “an excellent strategic thinker and tactician,” and he has been selected a "Top Lobbyist" by The Hill. POLITICO ranked Ed as a top municipal lobbyist, and his work has been highlighted in mainstream news media, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the National Journal, Roll Call and others. Forbes wrote of Ed, “For those who truly understand the personalities and skill sets that comprise the ranks of a major law firm, the conclusion is an easy one: Newberry is a doer of deeds.”

Ed is a trusted advisor to a wide range of corporate and sovereign government clients, including among the highest profile and most difficult policy challenges. His current projects include helping the largest technology company in the world address challenges with the US government; assisting one of the largest Korean conglomerates in expanding its business operations in the US; and leading efforts to secure US government approval of the Pebble Mine in Alaska (which contains the largest copper reserves in the world); as well as assisting major sovereign nations in their relations with the US government.

Before assuming his current role as a global managing partner, Ed served as managing partner of Patton Boggs, LLP, and led the firm’s merger with Squire Sanders to create Squire Patton Boggs, LLP, ranked 12th in Law360’s ranking of the Most Global law firms.

Active in a variety of not-for-profit organizations, Ed is a member of the Atlantic Council Board of Directors and a director of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. He has also served on the George Mason University Board of Visitors, by appointment of Virginia Governor Tim Kaine; served as Vice Chairman of the Kennedy Center Corporate Board; and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Building Museum.

John Boehner, the 53rd Speaker of the US House of Representatives, serves as a strategic advisor to clients in the US and abroad and focuses on global business development. Speaker Boehner joined the team during the autumn of 2016, making Squire Patton Boggs the only public policy firm in the world with a former US House Speaker and a former US Senate Majority Leader (Senator Trent Lott), with a best-in-class team that includes former Senator John Breaux, Representative Jack Kingston and Rodney Slater, who served as Secretary of Transportation under President Bill Clinton.

Speaker Boehner led the US House from January 2011 to October 2015, a time during which he navigated some of the most difficult legislative challenges of the modern era and forged strong relationships with business and government leaders throughout the world. A former small businessman who entered public service because of his desire to remove barriers to economic growth and private-sector job creation, Speaker Boehner is respected on both sides of the political aisle for his efforts to find common ground on major policy matters without compromising on principle, and for his belief that individuals of competing viewpoints can “disagree, without being disagreeable” to each other.

Also known for his candor, Speaker Boehner provides strategic advice and consulting to clients on all aspects of domestic and international policy, drawing from his decades of experience both in business and at the highest levels of the US government.

Prior to entering public service, Speaker Boehner spent years running a small business representing manufacturers in the packaging and plastics industry. After witnessing first-hand some of the challenges businesses encounter with government, he gradually entered the political arena, driven by a desire to help make government less intrusive and more accountable to the people it serves. He represented the people of Ohio's 8th Congressional District in the US House for nearly 25 years, leading the reform-minded “Gang of Seven” in the early 1990s that closed the scandal-ridden House Bank and forced a series of institutional changes in Congress, including measures requiring the House to be subject to annual independent audits of its financial records.

Speaker Boehner put his small business experience to work for constituents in 1999 by taking over the chairmanship of the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations, the congressional panel with jurisdiction over the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and matters of private-sector health care and retirement security policy. In this role, he crafted and successfully advanced measures dealing with employer-sponsored healthcare, pensions, stock options and other employee benefits.

Speaker Boehner's effectiveness in bridging the gap between government and the private sector on the subcommittee paved the way for him to become chairman of the full House Committee on Education and the Workforce in 2001. During his five years as chairman, Speaker Boehner developed a reputation for bringing Republicans and Democrats together in support of major policy initiatives and solving big legislative puzzles in areas ranging from education policy to pension reform.

Elected by his colleagues as US House Majority Leader in 2006, Speaker Boehner went on to serve as the top Republican leader in the US House for nearly a decade, becoming House Minority Leader following the 2006 elections and leading his party to majority control of the House in 2010, focusing the GOP agenda on economic growth policies and invoking his business roots with the rallying cry "Where are the Jobs?"

When Speaker Boehner took the gavel as Speaker of the US House in January 2011, he became the third-ranking position in the US government, second to the vice presidency in the order of presidential succession. Speaker Boehner dedicated his speakership to removing government barriers to private-sector job creation and addressing the drivers of the nation's massive debt. During his first year as Speaker, he helped guide enactment of implementing legislation for long-sought free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and also secured enactment of the Budget Control Act, which required major spending reductions and ultimately resulted in the enactment of the first bipartisan entitlement reforms in many years.

Speaker Boehner also forged close alliances with leaders and business and government throughout the world during his time as speaker, hosting global leaders at the US Capitol, leading bipartisan congressional delegations on missions to nearly every continent, and extending the invitation that resulted in Pope Francis becoming the first Pope in history to address a Joint Meeting of the US Congress.

Speaker Boehner joined Squire Patton Boggs in 2016, citing the opportunity “to engage with leaders in business and government throughout the world and help them work through the challenges they face, as part of a world-class team.” In his role as Senior Strategic Advisor, Speaker Boehner continues his mission to “help remove government barriers to economic growth and job creation” while providing high-level strategic advice to the firm’s global clientele.

Stephen Lerner is global chair of the Squire Patton Boggs Restructuring & Insolvency Practice Group. He has an extensive national and cross-border restructuring practice in which he represents debtors, distressed businesses, committees of unsecured creditors, secured and unsecured creditors, equity interest holders, boards of directors and acquirers of troubled businesses in Chapter 11 reorganization cases, Chapter 15 cross-border cases, Chapter 9 municipal restructurings and out-of-court restructurings throughout the United States, Europe and, most recently, in the United Arab Emirates, South America and India. Stephen is currently advising Blackjewel LLC, Hartshorne Mining Group and Ferrellgas in their complex restructuring efforts and recently completed the restructuring of Dana Gas PJSC, the largest regional private sector natural gas company in the Middle East, which was awarded the Middle East Restructuring of the Year in 2019 by the International Financial Law Review.

Stephen has led the representation of debtors or other leading parties in the Chapter 11 restructurings of AmFin Financial, Blackjewel LLC, Chrysler, EaglePicher, Energy & Exploration Partners, Enron, Ferrellgas, Lehman Brothers, Midway Gold, Optima Specialty Steel, Patriot Coal, Station Casinos, Veris Gold and WorldCom, among many others, and he represented the Court Appointed Expert in the City of Detroit’s historic Chapter 9 case. Stephen recently served as special counsel to the State of New Jersey in the out of court restructuring of Atlantic City and as lead restructuring advisor to Dana Gas PJSC, the largest independent gas company in the Middle East, in its US$700 million Islamic financing restructuring.

Stephen also led Squire Patton Boggs’ representation of the American College of Bankruptcy in filing an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court in the significant Stern related case of Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Peter H. Arkison, Trustee of the Estate of Bellingham Insurance Agency, Inc.