Monday, May 10, 2010 3:09 PM
Citizens United Enters FightAgainst Kagan
President Obama again attacked the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as he announced his pick of Elena Kagan, and the conservative group at the center of the case is firing back.
In remarks today, Obama applauded Kagan’s choice as Solicitor General to make the case her first argument, which he claimed “says a great deal not just about Elena’s tenacity but about her commitment to serving the American people.” Citizens United responded by urging “the Senate to reject Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court.”
“Every American has a fundamental right to speak out for or against their elected representatives without fear of reprisal, and a nominee who does not respect that right has no business on our nation’s highest court,” said the group’s president, David Bossie, in a statement released after the announcement. Obama famously derided the court’s decision during his State of the Union, when Justice Samuel Alito seemed to shake his head in disagreement with the president’s interpretation of the ruling.
Obama’s decision to underscore Kagan’s involvement of the controversial case, which lifted the ban on corporate spending in elections, indicates to Citizens United that Kagan’s “participation in that case was a significant factor in his decision to nominate her to the Supreme Court,” writes Bossie. Obama’s statements today and when Justice John Paul Stevens stepped down infers “that, as a political matter, Obama wants to make this senate confirmation fight partly about corporate power in a democracy and Citizens United,” argues University of Nebraska law professor Marvin Ammori, a legal scholar and expert in cyberlaw, who has questioned Kagan’s argument in the case.
Spokesman Will Holley did not respond to questions about whether Citizens United would campaign against Kagan’s confirmation.
Friday, April 9, 2010 10:30 AM
By Ashlie Rodriguez
Legislation by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., designed to circumvent the Citizens United ruling faces a number of hurdles and is unlikely to pass before the midterm elections, according to a panel hosted by the Center for Competitive Politics on Thursday. CCP is a 501(c)3 organization that opposes campaign finance laws.
In response to the “radical” Citizens United ruling, Schumer and Van Hollen in February released a framework for a bill that would prevent foreign-owned companies, government contractors and TARP recipients from spending money on elections, and would require disclosure of corporate and union spending on campaigns both to the FEC and to shareholders.
CCP President Sean Parnell argued that Schumer and Van Hollen are out of step with public opinion, citing a poll his group took last month that showed a favorable response to Citizens United.
“A majority of Americans, when you gave them the basic facts of the case, said that the government should not have been able to prevent Citizens United from running ads,” Parnell said.
James Portnoy, chief counsel of corporate and government affairs at Kraft Food, Inc., said that giving shareholders a bigger role in decision-making would be a major sticking point for the bill.
“Basically, corporate boards and corporate management don’t want anyone telling them how to run their business,” Portnoy said.
But Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, which favors campaign finance laws, argued in support of the bill’s disclosure requirements.
The basic purpose, McGehee said, “is to say, if you’re using money to run ads or do those kinds of political activities, let us know the sources of that.”
All panelists agreed, though, that in the hyperpolarized political climate, passing the bill into law before November would be highly unlikely. McGehee predicted that if the bill is not moved to the floor by the Fourth of July recess, then it will not be voted on until after the midterms.
But even if it passes, Parnell said, the issue would likely once again end up before a hostile Supreme Court.
“If the Supreme Court looks at this and says, ‘This is just an effort to undermine our decision,’ I don’t think the court is going to wave that through,” Parnell concluded.
While much attention is given to the pay grade enjoyed by presidents and chief executives of top lobbying groups, the paychecks of their seconds- and thirds-in-command are ample as well. The average compensation package in our list of health care lobby vice presidents (plus one executive director) for 2008, including base pay, bonuses and perks, is a generous $947,872.
Keeping in mind that numbers are relative and all the executives on our list are well compensated, there are revealing differences between the pay gaps in each organization. Steve Anderson, CEO of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, makes about $500,000 more than his executive vice president and just over twice as much as his senior vice president. Business Roundtable President John Castellani, on the other hand, brings home eight times as much as his executive director and executive vice president. The salaries of health lobby CEOs range from $1.8 million to $5.6 million, whereas their No. 2s and 3s fall in the range of $500K-$1.6 million.
By Ashlie Rodriguez
After President Obama this morning likened his health insurance exchange to an idea proposed by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank’s president, Edwin Feulner, took “great exception” to “this misuse of our work and abuse of our name.”
Appearing on NBC’s “Today Show,” Obama explained his insurance exchange as “being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, [an idea] that originated from The Heritage Foundation.”
Not so, Feulner said in a press release. “True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance,” he said. “President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.”
Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the think tank, said Heritage has been proposing health care reform options, providing research and appointing groups to give in-depth analysis on the subject since 1989.
“We’ve probably published several hundred critiques and analyses both pro and con on various items over the course of a year and a half,” Franc said.
Although Feulner called this “the latest act in a campaign to sell this big-government program as a moderate law that incorporates conservative ideas,” he added there could be a possibility Obama had his facts crossed.
“The idea of an exchange is something we touted a long time ago, but we weren’t the ones who invented it,” said Franc. “The origins of the exchange was really the federal employee benefits system.”
The foundation says it has written 50 to 70 papers on how this “free market” insurance exchange can be applied to other parts of the health care sector.
“The key thing here is that the president says that the exchange in the new law somehow mimics the kind of things we’ve written about for two decades,” Franc said, but Obama’s exchange “brings with it all sorts of very draconian regulations, none of which we would ever endorse.”
By Ashlie Rodriguez
All 17 government executive agencies have “made concrete changes” to their transparency standards since President Obama issued his Open Government Directive last December, according to Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform Norm Eisen, who spoke today in detail at the Building Transparency panel hosted by the Center for American Progress.
After Obama issued the directive along with others last year aimed at improving the Freedom of Information Act process, Eisen said agencies are beginning to create transparency plans in time for the April 7 deadline.
FOIA compliance, Eisen said, is where he has seen the most improvement. The Department of Agriculture put in tracking technologies for FOIA requests; the Department of Defense retrained over 500 persons involved in FOIA request processing; and the Federal bureau of Investigation has changed policy to comply with requests.
“And the list goes on, and on, and on,” Eisen emphasized.
Objective data now released on government web sites show that 10,000 more FOIA requests were released in part or full over the last fiscal year and 10,000 more people had requests for information answered by the government.
“Requests from the public are down, so these numbers are even more remarkable,” Eisen said, due to agencies “affirmatively releasing vast amounts of information” online.
Since Obama launched Data.gov, the site began in 2009 with 47 documents but currently catalogues 18,000.
“This reflects just six months or less of full implementation by president,” Eisen said.
Obama is working to incorporate the chief financial agencies, expanding the primary 17 agencies to 25, an ambitious effort that panelist and Policy Director at the Sunlight Foundation John Wonderlich questioned.
“What I don’t want to see happen to transparency is what happened to break dancing,” Wonderlich said. “A brief commercial success that becomes not hip in 2012.”
“I am confident that transparency won’t be a passing fad,” Eisen responded, citing that the agencies are in contract with themselves and have the authority to design a strategy that implements transparency, collaboration and participation with the administration.
“They will keep themselves honest,” Eisen said. “If we have leadership guidance, adequate resources, oversight and measurable benchmarks, those are the ingredients of keeping us accountable.”
Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Jim Harper, argued that while the administration is doing a good job creating a more open government, Obama has failed to follow through in his “sunlight before signing” promise, which stated that all bills would be posted online for five days before signed into law.
“I’ve been tracking it,” said Harper, who found that Obama was 7 for 143 on the promise, or .049 in terms of batting averages. “Maybe it was a mistake to make a trackable promise,” he added.
Eisen pointed to the realities of such a promise – that not all bills can wait five days and posting issues sometimes slow down a bill’s publishing time. Yet, he contended, some bills are posted earlier than five days and the administration has made them easier to find on the site.
Both Harper and Wonderlich agreed that Obama has made “historic” steps to initiate more government transparency, referencing the now public White House visitor log, but Harper had another suggestion – disclosing of earmark data online – an idea mentioned in Obama State of the Union speech.
“It is still early to judge,” Eisen said. “There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done.”
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Chamber Ads Divide Small Biz
Credit: Richard A. Bloom
Updated with U.S. Chamber comment at 12:09 p.m. on March 12.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it’s fighting for small businesses, but not all small-business owners appreciate the effort.
After the chamber’s launched its $4 million ad campaign against the health care bill Tuesday, the progressive Main Street Alliance pushed back, saying its members were being misrepresented and left without voice in the reform debate.
The Main Street Alliance, which represents about 10,000 small-business owners, is taking an aggressive stance against the chamber’s ads and sent a handful of its members to protest an insurance industry convention this week. Illinois small-business owner Dan Sherry, who sits on the group’s national board, said he was “at the front lines” of the protest because the alliance “wants Congress to listen to small-business owners, not the chamber.” After the protests, Sherry met with a number of Illinois legislative aides to discuss his coalition’s outlook.
“The U.S Chamber claims they talk for us when the truth is they’re a fully owned subsidiary in the pockets of the insurance companies,” Sherry said. “They represent strictly large businesses. To me it’s an absolute tragedy that most Americans think that whatever the chamber says is the voice of small business when it’s not.”
That’s not an accurate portrayal of the group’s motives, says James Gelfand, the chamber’s senior manager of health policy, who claims the reform stance “is 100 percent driven by the effects that it would have on premium payers, not on the people who would collect premiums.”
While MSA supports the Senate health care bill because it “provides subsidies, helps small businesses provide for their employees and levels the playing field,” Employers for a Healthy Economy, a group that supports the chamber’s ad campaign, countered that the bill is “unaffordable” and will end up costing small businesses more in state penalties.
Not outright supporters of the chamber, but “in line” with their position on small businesses, the 350,000-member-strong National Federation of Independent Business called the bill “devastating” due to the employer mandates it will impose. NFIB spokesperson Stephanie Cathcart said costs “will be passed on to us, the little guys.”
Molly Brogan, vice president of public affairs for the National Small Business Association, characterized her group’s position as “somewhere between the two” extremes in an e-mail to National Journal.
“We’ve been calling for broad reform of the health care system since 2004, but it’s got to be the right reform, and it’s got to be affordable –which I think is the underlying issue [the chamber’s] ads are trying to point out,” she said.
Brogan said her organization agrees with the chamber that the costs of employer mandates are “unaffordable,” but supports “long-term reductions in premium cost — not just short-term tax credits.”
“This debate is too important to walk away from or scrap entirely,” Brogan continued, “but it’s also too important not to get it done right.”
Chamber Coalition Makes ‘Final Push’
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 4:00 PM
As President Obama pushes for his health bill, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce continues to lead the opposition effort. The Chamber-led coalition Employers for a Healthy Economy announced its “final push” on health reform in a conference call today, vocalizing fears that passage of the Senate bill “not only will cost jobs but stifle any type of creation of jobs.”
Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president of government affairs, made the case against the Senate bill, arguing that it does not sufficiently “bend the cost curve.”
“With new health entitlement programs and new entitlement spending, the spending curve is expected to escalate just as rapidly as Medicare and Medicaid have in the past,” Josten said. The “unaffordable” expense of the bill will not only add to the deficit but increase taxes and mandates on already stressed businesses, he said.
“This massive bill failed to deliver lower coverage costs and will burden hard-pressed retailers with mandates and state penalties,” added Neil Trautwein, vice president and employee benefits policy counsel with the National Retail Federation. “Retail can simply not afford any higher benefit costs or burdensome mandates. This bill is a job-killer.”
“We are supposed to be about only jobs this year, and yet we are contemplating a bill that not only will cost jobs but stifle any type of creation of jobs,” complained Jade West of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors. “The business community will not take risks while they are simultaneously being hit with massive new taxes and mandates. They do not know what’s coming at them, and they are therefore hunkering down.”
Josten suggested alternative approaches to reform, including HSAs and other market-based ideas that he “does not see taking place in this bill.”
EHE is taking this argument to the airwaves in a multimillion-dollar campaign to motivate voters in key states to tell their representatives to vote “no.”
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Public Finance Can Work
A new system of public financing for state candidates in Connecticut resulted in a decrease in large donors and an increase in individual contributors in 2008, according to a Campaign Finance Institute study out this week.
Under a state law that went into effect with the 2008 campaign cycle, candidates must collect a certain number of contributions between $5 and $100 in order to qualify for public funding. According to the preliminary findings, the law “stimulated” candidates seeking public funding to steer away from large donors and instead involve a larger number of small donors.
Understanding why more people get engaged in giving small contributions and giving in some contexts more than others was the initial intent of the research, according to CFI Executive Director Michael Malbin. “We also wondered if you could get enough people into that game to replace the large donors,” Malbin said, by using tools such as rebates and tax credits on contributions and public finance.
Yet while the law in Connecticut enthused low-dollar contributors, the study found the candidates did not “reach out to a more representative set of donors and volunteers” than in 2006 because once they reached the qualifying threshold, addition money raised would roll over to the state.
To resolve the disincentive, Malbin proposed a solution earlier this year which, like the Fair Elections Now Act, would seek to lower contribution limits and provide matching funds to encourage small-money donors.
Connecticut’s system, on the other hand, “requires candidates to buy into a spending limit, either full or partial,” Malbin said. Most candidates opt out of public funding “afraid to buy into a spending limit because they don’t know what might hit them at the end of the week.”
“Instead of telling candidates to expect a spending limit, we propose — like FENA — to take a lower contribution limit. That kind of approach gives candidates incentive to activate more small donors than a closed funding system.”
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Retailers Launch Legal Center
The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group representing some 200 retailers, manufacturers and suppliers, today launched the Retail Litigation Center in effort to strengthen the group’s influence over cases of interest to the industry.
RILA President Sandy Kennedy says they’ve been working on the litigation center for a number of years and aspire to be “as good” as the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform in giving businesses an opportunity to weigh in on a variety of litigation.
“We’ve been involved with the Chamber and others in partnering on different amicus briefs we thought had an impact on the retail industry,” Kennedy said. “So this gave us an opportunity to set up focused organization separate from RILA that would be lead by some of the important legal minds in retail that could direct our activities.”
Guided by a board of directors consisting of vice presidents from industry titans such as Wal-Mart, Target and J.C. Penny, the Center will file amicus briefs on behalf of retailers at the appellate level on issues involving their workforce, intellectual property and privacy concerns.
RILA has had successes in the past challenging the Maryland Fair Share Act, which would require retailers with 10,000 or more employees to pay a certain percentage of payroll for employees’ health benefits.
When asked why RILA challenged the Fair Share Act, Kennedy explained they thought it was “a very discriminatory mandate that singles out one industry — retail — and certain sizes of retail employers as well. We have a very different kind of work force — they tend to be younger, we have part time/seasonal workers — so it’s important we’re able to tailor to our individual workforces.”
Protecting its coalition of business-owners is the main goal of RILA and the legal center, who are co-sponsoring an annual conference this year to generate ideas and legal strategies amongst members. The center does not intend on using the conference or its network to fundraise for political campaigns.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Not Happy With Stern
President Obama may have hoped to appease critics by creating the new, bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, but his appointment of SEIU President Andy Stern to the panel has drawn rebuke from conservatives.
“Either the White House doesn’t read the newspaper or simply doesn’t care, but naming Andy Stern as a member of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility doesn’t pass the laugh test,” said Katie Packer, executive director of the anti-union Workforce Fairness Institute, in a statement.
Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., a member of the House Budget Committee, told The Hotline that the appointment “makes sense for Obama’s election efforts and funding for his election, but not about truly getting our deficit under control. This is more of an electoral insurance policy than a deficit reduction plan.”
Packer cited not only the millions donated by SEIU to Democrats in the 2008 campaign, but also reports that the organization has had difficulty meeting its own pension obligations: “The SEIU’s pension fund is in serious trouble, yet the White House wants Big Labor to come up with recommendations on how to reduce the federal deficit?”
Also speaking out against the appointment were the Alliance for Worker Freedom and Americans for Tax Reform, who have requested an investigation into Stern’s “potentially illegal lobbying activities.”
Stern himself released a statement emphasizing his connection to the blue-collar workers who are bearing the brunt of the recession.
“I have talked to thousands of our members, many low-wage workers, who have to make hard choices everyday to make ends meet, while never losing sight of their dreams — to provide a more prosperous future for their families,” Stern said.
“They also want and expect their government to make the right choices: to restore our economic health, make smart long-term investments, create a fiscally sound, and fair economic system that rewards hard work and allows their children and grandchildren to live a better life than their parents,” he added.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Summit Attendees Heavily Funded by Health Lobby
Health care interests have given $46.6 million in campaign donations since 2005 to the 21 lawmakers in today’s bipartisan health care summit — including Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va. — and to the summit’s host, President Obama, according to a new report.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found that health professionals, political action committees, hospitals and nursing homes, pharmaceutical and health product companies, health services firms, HMOs and accident insurers have given heavily to all summit attendees.
Obama received almost 10 times more than any other name on the list, raking in $18.7 million from the industry during the presidential campaign.
Receiving the most money in the Senate were Baucus and McConnell, who scored more than $2 million each. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., took in $1.6 million.
In the House, Cantor and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., were just shy of $2 million each, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., received about $1 million.
Democrats on the list accepted about $15 million from health care interests; Republicans trailed slightly with $12.8 million.
“The health care industry has paid millions to insure its views are represented at tomorrow’s health care summit,” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said in a statement Wednesday. “The question is, who will be there representing the rest of us?”
Monday, February 22, 2010
Incumbents Hit On Earmarks
Candidates preaching fiscal discipline have a new line of attack to hurl at incumbents during this deficit-focused cycle: an increase in earmark spending in 2009.
Nonpartisan budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense analyzed congressional earmarking for FY2010 and found 2,000 fewer earmarks but a $300 million increase in cost. The group also broke down each chambers’ top 10 earmarkers.
A handful of candidates have taken up earmark spending as a campaign issue, including state Sen. Charlie Justice, D-Fla., who went public with his criticism of Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., the day after the earmark report came out. Young was the biggest recipient of earmarks in the House, accumulating around $90 million.
“It is time for Bill Young to go,” Justice said in a press release that also accused the congressman of funneling money to family and former staffers. “Bill Young has embraced the corrupt ethics of a bygone era and made it a part of the federal budget process. Until Bill Young is removed from Congress, the federal budget process cannot be healed and deficits cannot be controlled.”
In Utah, Sen. Bob Bennett faces fire from four Republican primary challengers, including James Williams, who criticizes Bennett for lining up over $200 million in joint earmarks. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Williams “would forgo all earmarks if elected” and for every earmark Congress funds, he “wants to see a corresponding budget cut elsewhere.”
Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who has undergone criticism from GOP rival Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey for the $35 million cost of his joint earmarks, finds Ramsey’s attacks unwarranted, saying “I’ve funded the critical responsibilities of the federal government — or helped fund them.”
The leading Republican on the Senate spending panel, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., received the biggest joint earmarks last year with a little under $500 million, followed by Appropriations Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who earmarked about $400 million. Representing the same state as Cochran, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., came in third, earmarking $368 million, which was secured “largely as a result of riding the coattails of the senior Mississippi Senator” said the TCS analysis.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., were the Senate’s biggest solo earmark recipients with both securing around $100 million each.
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made the “top ten” list in the House, she received about $40 million less than Young. The late Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., came in third, carving out a little more than $80 million
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Small Biz Wants Health Reform
Members of the Main Street Alliance, a progressive group representing small-business owners, voiced their anger and anxiety over rising health care costs in a conference call with Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., this afternoon. (National Journal subscribers can read more about the Main Street Alliance here.)
Small-business owners are finding the public option more appealing than ever before, the group said, as they face health insurance rate hikes of 20 percent to 120 percent next year. “We’re eating the cost of the increases with about 10 percent of our payroll,” said Laurie Pitman, owner of Golden Gate Helicopters in San Jose, Calif., whose current plan under Anthem Blue Cross increased by 25 percent in November.
Pitman, who is proud to offer coverage for her 11 employees, expressed anger over a recent report from Health Care for America Now, the nation’s largest health care campaign, that measured a $12.2 billion profit for the biggest health insurance companies in 2009 — a 56 percent increase from last year.
According to HCAN, insurance companies such as WellPoint, Humana and Cigna Corp. “sailed through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression” with record profits by increasing costs to policyholders. This rate hike disproportionately burdens small-business owners because of their problems of scale, Blumenauer said.
Forced to absorb annually increasing rates, small-business owners have little option but to cut health care plans, lay off employees or as the members of the Main Street Alliance fear — close up shop. “We can’t compete with national chains,” said Virgina Beach restaurant owner, Brian Radford. “These rates just aren’t sustainable.”
With the support of Blumenauer, the group has written Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., pressing them to pass a health care reform bill that includes the public option. “It’s not too late to clean up the Senate bill,” Blumenauer said, a task he looks forward to next week once Congress is back in session.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
$300 Million Haul In 2009
Members of Congress took in a combined $78 million in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 5.4 percent from the previous quarter and enough to bring their yearly total to $294 million. Digging through end-of-year campaign finance reports, researchers at the Center for Responsive Politics have ferreted out 2009’s top fundraisers in the House and Senate.
Much of the big money went to incumbents running for the Senate, such as Rep. Mark Kirk , R-Ill., who raised $4.8 million in his bid to capture the seat currently held by Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. Kirk’s top donors included Kirkland & Ellis LLP and medical supply company Medline Industries.
No surprise, those in the hot seat also brought in impressive hauls, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who accrued a whopping $9.5 million, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who raised $7.1 million.
Among the House leadership, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., brought in $1.5 million, trailing Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio’s $2.4 million and Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia’s $2.6 million.
The top fundraiser in 2009 from either party was Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who raised $10.1 million. Former presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., currently has the most cash on hand, ending the year with $27.5 million.
Ashlie Rodriguez 
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