[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 67 (Wednesday, April 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2443-S2445]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               DARK MONEY

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here to talk about money in 
politics and, even more insidiously and potentially perniciously, money 
in government.
  The money in politics begins with the President's nominee to be 
Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. I suggest to my colleagues that they 
read an article that appeared in opensecrets.org from the Center for 
Responsive Politics. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   [OpenSecrets.org, Center for Responsive Politics, March 24, 2018]

         Trump Picks Top Koch Recipient for Secretary of State

                 (By Megan Janetsky and Matthew Kelly)

       President Trump nixed Rex Tillerson as secretary of state 
     Tuesday in favor of CIA Director Mike Pompeo, a former Kansas 
     congressman whose political career was paved by Koch 
     Industries.
       Headquartered in Pompeo's former Wichita district, the 
     privately held company run by conservative megadonors Charles 
     and David Koch has funneled more money to the Trump pick than 
     any other federal politician.
       The oil-and-gas conglomerate built a reputation for using a 
     network of ``dark money'' to exert political influence and 
     was Pompeo's top donor over the course of his former 
     congressional career.
       That ``in'' may work to the advantage of the Koch brothers, 
     who hold a significant interest in global affairs, especially 
     with Trump's recently imposed tariffs.

                        TOP DONORS TO MIKE POMPEO
                             [Career Totals]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          Donor                                Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Koch Industries.........................................        $400,500
Textron.................................................         $79,810
Mull Drilling...........................................         $70,350
Club for Growth.........................................         $64,817
Ritchie Exploration.....................................         $55,954
INTRUST Bank............................................         $55,300
McCoy Petroleum.........................................         $52,550
AT&T....................................................         $51,250
Cox Enterprises.........................................         $47,300
Emprise Bank............................................         $44,555
------------------------------------------------------------------------

       Since his first bid for Congress in 2010, Pompeo has 
     received $400,500 from Koch Industries--$335,500 from 
     individual employee contributions and $65,000 from its 
     corporate PAC, Center for Responsive Politics data shows.
       Each election cycle leading up to his confirmation as CIA 
     director in 2017, Pompeo led all federal politicians in Koch-
     related donations. He's also received more money from the oil 
     interest than any candidate since 1989.
       Trump's announcement came in a surprise tweet Tuesday 
     morning, adding Tillerson to a growing list of White House 
     officials to unceremoniously leave the administration.
       Tillerson thanked members of the State Department in a news 
     conference that afternoon, saying ``the world needs selfless 
     leaders such as these.''
       ``I will address a few administrative matters related to my 
     departure and work towards a smooth and orderly transition 
     for secretary of state-designate, Mike Pompeo,'' Tillerson 
     told reporters.
       Pompeo's relationship with the Kochs has held strong over 
     the years. In 2014, when he faced a tough primary challenge, 
     the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity group spent over 
     $409,000 supporting Pompeo.
       Other congressional leaders who trailed Pompeo in career 
     donations from Koch Industries include House Speaker Paul 
     Ryan (R-Wis.) with $274,172 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch 
     McConnell (R-Ky.) with $148,350.
       But Pompeo's ties to the Koch brothers predate his 
     political career.
       He used investments from the Koch empire to help kick-start 
     a Wichita-based company, Thayer Aerospace. After leaving the 
     company, Pompeo acted as head of Sentry International, an oil 
     drilling manufacturer with Koch ties.
       Those investments seem to have paid off.
       When Pompeo entered Congress, he brought with him a former 
     Koch Industries lawyer as his chief of staff. Within his 
     first week on the job, Pompeo proposed measures considered 
     top legislative priorities for Koch Industries.
       The proposals included cutting funding for an Environmental 
     Protection Agency registry of greenhouse-gas polluters and a 
     database of consumer complaints about unsafe products, The 
     Washington Post reported.
       Along with Koch support, Pompeo has been bankrolled by 
     other oil-and-gas interests, including Textron, Mull Drilling 
     and McCoy Petroleum. The industry has given him a total of 
     $1.2 million, the most by any industry, CRP data shows.
       Now Pompeo enters the role of the White House's chief 
     diplomat, a position that can affect the financial interests 
     of multinational companies.

[[Page S2444]]



              TOP POLITICIANS SUPPORTED BY KOCH INDUSTRIES
                             [Career Totals]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Politican               Last Office Sought        Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Pompeo (R-KS)................  House...............        $400,500
Todd Tiahrt (R-KS)................  House...............        $388,766
Paul Ryan (R-WI)..................  House...............        $274,172
Pat Roberts (R-KS)................  Senate..............        $258,850
James M Inhofe (R-OK).............  Senate..............        $187,150
Jerry Moran (R-KS)................  Senate..............        $175,900
Roy Blunt (R-MO)..................  Senate..............        $168,600
Sam Brownback (R).................  President...........        $168,050
Pete Sessions (R-TX)..............  House...............        $162,000
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)............  Senate..............        $148,350
------------------------------------------------------------------------

       The Koch brothers already have a broad international 
     presence. According to the company's website, Koch companies 
     alone ``employ more than 120,000 people across about 60 
     countries.''
       While Pompeo has yet to take a stance on Trump's recently 
     rolled out tariffs, Charles Koch harshly rejected them, 
     saying in a press release last week that ``History is filled 
     with examples of administrations that implemented trade 
     restrictions with devastating results.''
       ``One might assume that, as head of Koch Industries--a 
     large company involved in many industries, including steel--I 
     would applaud such import tariffs because they would be to 
     our immediate and financial benefit,'' he wrote. ``Corporate 
     leaders must reject this type of short-term thinking, and we 
     have.''
       Late last year, the Charles Koch Foundation embarked on a 
     multimillion-dollar project to promote the realist school of 
     foreign policy in programs at elite universities such as 
     Harvard, Notre Dame and the Massachusetts Institute of 
     Technology.
       Koch is an outspoken libertarian when it comes to foreign 
     policy, and the realist school of foreign policy champions 
     restraint on the world stage and taking a backseat on 
     humanitarian intervention and nation-building.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. The article has the headline ``Trump picks top Koch 
recipient for secretary of state.'' The article says that ``former 
Kansas congressman whose political career was paved by Koch 
Industries'' received more money than others in similar situations.
  The reasons to vote against Mike Pompeo are many, but one of the 
principal ones is that he was one of the chief recipients of money from 
the Koch brothers or their organizations. In fact, since his first bid 
for Congress in 2010, Pompeo has received $400,000 from Koch 
Industries, $335,000 from employee contributions, and $65,000 from its 
corporate PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
  The Pompeo nomination is a poster boy for the impact of money in 
politics, the influence of the Koch brothers on this administration, 
and the enduring effect of campaign contributions, of influence-buying 
and pettiness in government.
  The Koch brothers are blatantly using their influence in the Trump 
administration to advance an agenda based on their own self-interests 
at the expense of our democracy, and they have reached into the 
uppermost levels and echelons of this administration through 
individuals they have supported over years and years, such as Mike 
Pompeo.
  In July of 2015, 2 weeks before he kicked off his campaign for 
President, the President said through a tweet: ``I really like the Koch 
Brothers (members of my [Palm Beach] Club), but I don't want their 
money or anything else from them. Cannot influence Trump!'' Well, they 
are good friends. They are members of the club. And nobody can deny 
their influence on Donald Trump, their impact on this administration, 
or their enduring reaches and effects on public policy.
  If you have ever wondered where Republican ideological positions 
originated on lowering corporate taxes, undercutting healthcare, or 
loosening environmental regulations, look no further than a Koch front 
group called Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity is the 
recipient of the largest grants made by another organization called 
Freedom Partners. POLITICO describes Freedom Partners as ``the Koch 
brothers' secret bank.'' The group peddles dark money to front groups 
to drum up public support for policies that benefit the richest of the 
rich.
  The Americans for Prosperity organization has been called by the 
Washington Post ``the third largest political party in the United 
States.'' It was founded in 2004 by David Koch, who serves as the 
chairman of the board, and he has crammed the group with Republican 
operatives. Many of them work for the Vice President. They operate in 
36 States. They are heavily involved in electoral activities, spending 
millions of dollars on TV ads that spread disinformation, falsely 
claiming that the middle class will benefit from policies designed to 
enrich the millionaire backers and billionaire backers of Americans for 
Prosperity.
  The organizations backed by these two groups and others have 
consistently claimed that tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit all 
Americans. They have consistently argued for measures that cause 
environmental degradation. In fact, the Koch brothers have an enormous 
stake in repealing regulations that protect the environment and put 
limits on polluting fossil fuel companies, repealing those regulations 
designed to accomplish that goal.
  Americans for Prosperity drives the Koch energy agenda. The group 
spent millions lobbying for its industry-backed champion, Scott Pruitt, 
to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as others 
nominated for EPA and Energy Department positions. Once they were in 
place, these cronies wasted no time in seeking to dismantle the 
environmental regulations prohibiting oil and gas drilling on Federal 
lands, withdraw from the Clean Power Plan, which is aimed at cutting 
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and revoke a moratorium on new coal 
leases.
  There are other examples of influence by an American in modern 
political history but none so egregious as the Koch brothers in this 
administration.
  Most recently, we saw their influence on the judiciary in suppressing 
votes. The Koch brothers are throwing a lot of money behind the 
nomination of judges who are poised to rule in their favor, undermining 
judicial precedence and the rule of law. Its network is helping Donald 
Trump stack the courts with far-right ideologues.
  Donald Trump entered office with more than 100 vacancies on the 
Federal bench--an opportunity created in part by Senate Republicans who 
blocked many of Barack Obama's nominees before he left office. Judges 
enjoy lifetime appointments. If the Koch brothers succeed in rigging 
the judiciary against the needs of everyday Americans, the effects will 
be felt for generations to come.
  Americans for Prosperity is also behind shameless efforts to suppress 
votes. It has launched disinformation campaigns, sending out bogus 
registration mailings with incorrect deadlines in swing States like 
North Carolina and Wisconsin. When challenged, Americans for Prosperity 
claims that these blatant lies were the result of clerical error.
  Our Nation needs prosperity but not an influence-peddling 
organization that claims to be for prosperity but, in fact, leads to 
policy that undermines the prosperity of everyday Americans.
  My reasons for opposing Mike Pompeo's nomination go well beyond the 
campaign contributions he has received. His views are contrary to 
American values. He has repeatedly devalued and dismissed religious 
tolerance. He has allied himself with anti-Islam and anti-LGBT groups. 
At a time when the environment our children will inherit hangs in the 
balance, he is a career-long climate change denier, drowning in dark 
money from the Koch brothers' oil industry. His regressive views on 
reproductive rights jeopardize the healthcare of millions of women 
around the world. If confirmed, he will be responsible for executing 
Donald Trump's misguided policies, and he will reinforce Donald Trump's 
misguided instinct, expanding, for example, the global gag rule that 
prevents foreign aid from being provided to global health programs that 
discuss or provide abortion services. He will cut programs covering 
everything from HIV prevention, to maternal and child health, to 
epidemic disease response, putting our lives at risk.
  Money in politics has reached its apex in this administration, not 
only in politics but in government. Just within the last day or so, the 
President's Director of the Office of Management and Budget gave a 
speech to a group of bankers in which he said:

       We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you were a 
     lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn't talk to you. If 
     you were a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

  That quote from Mick Mulvaney, the head of the Office of Management 
and Budget, was made to a group of about 1,300 bankers in plain view 
and hearing of the American public.

[[Page S2445]]

  First, the idea that a lobbyist would have to pay in order to have 
access to a Member of Congress or his administration raises the 
potential of bribery, extortion, and perhaps pay-to-play. It is pay-to-
play and the image of it that has so sullied this town and government 
in general that President Trump swayed so many people by describing it 
as a swamp. Well, the swamp has been deepened, and it has been further 
polluted by exactly this kind of talk.
  I will say to Mick Mulvaney: You are destroying the credibility and 
trust of the American people and our honest colleagues, who come to 
work every day and try to help and serve the American people. Some of 
them still work in the Federal Government at high levels, in fear of 
losing their jobs because they adhere to a standard of integrity that 
no longer prevails.
  In fact, the mindset and mentality of pay-to-play has become the new 
normal in this administration. It is filled with people at the highest 
levels who regard unbridled and unapologetic graft as the new normal. 
That is what that quote says to the average American.
  It is typical of the practices of the Administrator of the EPA, who 
accepts virtually free lodging from a lobbyist who has access to him, 
as well as takes luxury flights and stays in exorbitantly expensive 
hotels at taxpayers' expense. Conflicts of interest, ethical 
violations, and other kinds of betrayal of the public trust have become 
commonplace at the top levels of the EPA.
  It is the mindset of a President of the United States who literally 
every day accepts benefits from foreign governments and payment in 
violation of the U.S. Constitution, specifically in violation of the 
emoluments clause that prohibits such benefits and payments without the 
consent of Congress. Donald Trump has never come to the U.S. Congress 
seeking approval for the payments and benefits that go to the Trump 
Organization, which he still owns. That failure is a violation of the 
emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, and it is the reason that 
200 of us Members of Congress have brought legal action to vindicate 
our trust and the trust of the American people that the Constitution 
will be followed and that we will do our job. We have standing to bring 
that action because the President of the United States is preventing us 
from reviewing those payments and benefits that go to him, which we 
have an obligation to review under the U.S. Constitution. That case 
will be heard in court in June.

  I hope the courts will vindicate the rule of law. I hope we will see 
an end to this corrosive and corrupting impact of money in politics and 
money in government through a web of deceit and contempt for the rule 
of law that betrays the trust of the American people.
  The Washington, DC, that is conveyed by these quotes and actions by 
officials at the very top of our government are not my Washington. They 
are not the Washington, DC, of many of our colleagues--honest and hard-
working in this Chamber, in the House of Representatives, and in the 
executive and judicial branches--who continue to do their job. Among 
them are two of our colleagues: Johnny Isakson and Jon Tester.
  Senator Isakson of Georgia and Senator Tester of Montana have helped 
to lead the Veterans' Affairs Committee over the past few days as it 
raises concerns and questions about the serious allegations made by men 
and women in uniform or retired Active-Duty military. These concerns go 
directly to the ethics and integrity and character and ability of the 
President's nominee to be VA Secretary, Ronny Jackson, a rear admiral 
in the U.S. Navy. There is no realistic path at this point to 
confirmation of Admiral Jackson. He should have a hearing if he wishes. 
He should be considered if he chooses. But the administration owes the 
American people, as well as the Senate, answers to questions raised by 
the chairman and ranking member of the VA Committee. I have talked to 
both of them, as well as the staff, about this investigation, and I 
have participated in their thinking and support their efforts to 
uncover the truth. Facts are stubborn things. That is what Ronald 
Reagan said. It remains true even more so today in this inquiry.
  The administration has failed to vet this nomination. It failed 
abjectly to uncover the truth before it submitted this nomination. It 
owes the truth and the facts now to the Senate before there is any 
hearing. Documents and evidence should be provided, and the 
administration should reverse course, if necessary, and make sure that 
full access is provided to all of these documents and evidence.
  As recently as yesterday, members of the VA Committee were barred 
from viewing the FBI background check. The Inspector General's report 
of 2012 on Rear Admiral Jackson was not provided to our committee, and 
other relevant evidence and documents may exist, but they have been 
denied.
  I urge the administration to provide the facts, respond to the 
questions, and address the serious allegations that have been made, 
because they are consistent and credible and compelling. The more time 
goes on, the more serious and substantial these allegations become in 
their detail and depth and power. Time is not on their side, and so 
far, the administration has abjectly failed to respond.
  I thank Senators Isakson and Tester for their leadership and for 
their insistence on integrity and character because our veterans 
deserve it. Most importantly, our veterans deserve the very best 
leader, not one who will be encumbered by the baggage of allegations, 
unrefuted and unrebutted so far. Our veterans deserve the very best in 
healthcare and employment opportunities and skill training. Our 
veterans deserve that we keep faith with them and choose the very best 
leader, with experience in management, as well as a commitment to the 
high standards of integrity that befit the Veterans' Administration. It 
has seen problems. It needs improvement and reforms. The path forward 
for the VA is with a person and a leader who has unimpeachable 
integrity.
  I thank Senator Isakson and Senator Tester for their leadership and 
insistence on that high bar in the Veterans' Administration for the 
sake of our veterans.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________