Anatomy of a Koch-a-Thon: Sham Budget Hearings Brought to You by the Koch Brothers

The Koch Brothers: The stealth commanders of a vast right-wing army.

• The Koch Brothers, whose combined wealth is more than that of the fourth richest person in the U.S. [1]—have used their enormous wealth to fund a vast empire committed to pushing an ultra-conservative policy agenda that benefits large corporate interests [2] at the expense of the middle class and working families.
• Their multi-million dollar investments in shadow groups are aimed at advancing policies [3] that enhance their own profit taking in a vast network of oil and gas, chemicals, cattle, and forestry businesses.
• The Koch’s have been active players in the right wing assaults on health care reform, Wall Street reform, collective bargaining rights, and efforts to curb climate change [3].
• The Koch brothers have donated upwards of $85 million [4] to conservative candidates over the past 15 years, including to the vast majority of the current freshman GOP class [5].
• Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ political arm, amassed a $40 million budget [6] for the 2010 elections.  Americans for Prosperity helped organize [7] voters for the Tea Party movement via chapters in 32 states. 
• The Koch brothers fund a wide array [8] of ultra-conservative think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute (receiving $1,979,400), the Mercatus Center (receiving $9.6M) [8].
• Koch Industries has operations in 45 states; it is the largest [9] single oil and gas-industry donor to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
• Koch-funded entities donated $60,500 [10] to the 2010 campaign of Rep. Paul Ryan, author of the Republican budget proposal.
• They donated directly to 13 winning Republican governors [11] last year, including Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a state where they spent $160,000 [12] on elections overall.
• The Koch brothers have pledged to raise $88 million [13] for the 2012 election cycle.

The Koch Brothers’ web of connections to Issa’s sham budget hearings:

• Contributions to Issa and the Committee
  • The Koch brothers have contributed $107,000 to 13 Republican members [14] of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of which Issa is the Chairman.
  • $12,500 in Koch funding has gone to Issa specifically [14], along with $5,000 to his PAC
    
• Connections to Committee staff
  • One staffer [15] completed an Associate Program with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and worked for the conservative think tank the Mercatus Center, which received $9.6M from the Koch Brothers
  • Daniel Epstein, formerly in the Koch general counsel’s office, is now joining the committee [15] as Republican counsel.
  • At least three other committee staffers [15] have ties to the Koch-funded Mercatus Center.
    
    
• Connections to hearing witnesses
  • Mark Mix, President of the National Right To Work Committee and President of the National Right To Work Legal Defense Fund
    • Was a presenter at a Koch Conference in Aspen, Colorado [16], where he discussed coordinated electoral strategies.  His organization, National Right to Work, receives free summer employees [17] from the Koch summer fellows program.
    • Mix attended the 2010 Koch Conference in Aspen, Colorado. [16]
    • Mix presented [18] a session entitled “Mobilizing Citizens for November,” on the topic: “Is there a chance this fall to elect leaders who are strongly committed to liberty and prosperity?” alongside Sean Noble and Tim Phillips of the Koch Funded Americans for Prosperity.
    • Mix is a Speaker for the Leadership Institute [19], an organization that received over $100,000 [20]  from Koch-funded foundations.
      
      
  • Andrew Biggs, Assistant Director of the Project on Social Security Choice at the American Enterprise Institute and Desmond Lachman, Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
    
    • AEI received $150,000 [21] from the Koch Brothers.
    • The Koch brothers pay summer fellows [17] to work at AEI
    • The President of AEI, Arthur Books, and Fellow Peter Wallison coordinated political strategy [18] with the Koch brothers, and presented on the “threat” of unions at the Koch conference in Aspen.
    • Biggs was a social security analyst at the Cato Institute [22], another Koch-funded conservative think-tank which received $13.7 [23] million from Koch
      
      
• Connections to Walker
  • Governor Walker received $43,000 [24] in campaign contributions from the Koch brothers.
  • The Koch’s gave $1.2 Million to Republican governors, who like Walker, are trying to dismantle unions. [25]
  •  The Koch’s helped to slash Wisconsin jobs and organized pro-Walker protests. [26]

Darrell Issa’s political anti-working family, pro-corporate agenda: Fighting healthcare reform, boosting corporate profits, scrapping worker’s rights.

• Issa’s outreach to corporations to guide his Committee’s agenda.
  • Issa’s first act as Chairman was to appoint Subcommittee Chairs whose campaigns were bankrolled [27] by special interests under the committee’s jurisdiction.
  • Issa asked corporate insiders to tell him what to investigate [28], but wants to keep his meetings with them a secret [29].
  • Issa thinks that earmarks are “tantamount to a bribe,” but only came to this conclusion after requesting hundreds of millions of dollars worth [30] himself.
    
    
• His fight against health care, climate change, etc.
  • He wrote to 150 corporate lobbyists, industry groups and think tanks to ask them to furnish lists of the regulations they wanted changed [28] or investigated. Many of the responses zeroed in on the environmental and worker-protection regulations from the EPA [31].
  • Issa consistently supports the Koch agenda of repealing the new healthcare law [32], denying the existence of climate change [33], and opposing worker’s rights [34].  He supports gutting the EPA, [35] and a wide range of consumer protections [36].
    
    
• Hearings he has held so far:
  • In just the second hearing of his tenure, Issa convened two hours of Congressional Republicans and corporate executives blasting EPA regulations that he called “Regulatory Impediments to Job Creation [36].”
  • He held an unprecedented hearing [37] into the collective bargaining agreement between the US Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union.
  • Issa held a hearing on the Recovery Act called “Waste and Abuse: The Refuse of the Federal Spending Binge [38].”
    
    
• Partisan witch hunts:
  • Issa’s committee released a one-sided report, which is essentially a conspiracy theory entitled Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies [39], designed to smear these organizations and President Obama.  Issa in fact supported [40] ACORN until it was no longer politically convenient.
  • Issa’s real priority is making sure President Obama is not reelected.  He said [41] that the President is “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times” and that Obama is “certainly playing faster and looser with the rules with very little justification than George W. Bush did.”

Scott Walker’s political anti-working family, pro-corporate agenda: Punishing hard-working civil servants, rewarding his friends and political allies.

• Walker helped drive his state into a deficit with $140 billion [42] in giveaways for his corporate backers -- and then he claimed that taking away workers’ rights was the only way to fix the budget [43].  GOP State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald crowed to Fox news [44] that the provisions to take away workers’ rights would weaken unions and help defeat President Obama in the next election
• Walker pushed legislation to strip state and local government employees of the right to collectively bargain over anything other than wages and then directly defied a judicial order [45] blocking the implementation of his union-busting bill.  Walker tried to implement it anyway and had to be ordered a second time [46] to comply with the law.
• Walker was caught on tape [47] admitting that he had considered planting agitators among peaceful protesters to engage in activities that would make the protesters look bad (a tactic recently used by oppressive governments in Iran and Egypt). 
• Walker appointed Brian Deschane [48] – a 27-year-old with no college degree and little management experience – as head of environmental and regulatory affairs in the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.  This was a promotion and 26% raise for Deschane, who had worked for the state government for only two months.  His main qualification seemed to be his father, who one of Walker’s top funders and a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Builders Association.
• In February, the mistress [49] of one of Walker’s Republican Senate allies was hired for a job at the Department of Regulation and Licensing at an almost 40% salary increase [50] over her predecessor.  She reportedly received the job over several well qualified and highly recommended applicants, even though she may not have even formally applied [51] for the position.
• Walker rejected [52] over $800 million in federal funding to build a high-speed passenger rail system in the state, and instead favored a rail-infrastructure improvement project that could be completed by Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Company.  This project was allocated $14 million in state funds. 
• The head of the railroad company, William Gardner, is a Scott Walker donor who is pleading guilty to laundering campaign contributions [53] to fund Walker’s campaign.  When he was caught last year, Walker was forced to return the illegally contributed money that he had previously accepted.  The railroad has already paid a forfeiture of $166,690, the largest ever imposed by state officials. Gardner had previously given Walker an illegal campaign contribution in 2005 [54].