[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 509-511]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP'S CABINET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, in America, we expect no one to be above the 
law. But, what happens if someone is super rich and breaks the law?
  Today, I rise to place on the Record a demand that the President-
elect's Cabinet nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos of 
Michigan, immediately pay fines she owes to the State of Ohio.
  These obligations total $5.3 million, just as Congresswoman Joyce 
Beatty stated in her opening statement, and also Congresswoman Marcia 
Fudge, who will speak subsequent to my own remarks. This is an enormous 
amount of money owed to the State of Ohio in unpaid fines and levied 
late penalties for Ms. DeVos' political organization for campaign 
finance violations in Ohio. They broke Ohio law. These are the largest 
fines ever levied in Ohio history, dating back to 2008. Essentially, 
the political organization Ms. DeVos led violated Ohio's election laws.
  Betsy DeVos of Michigan was in charge of the political action 
committee known as All Children Matter, based in Virginia. During her 
chairwomanship, she broke Ohio's election laws which impose spending 
donation limits of $10,000 per candidate. She, in fact, violated those 
limits by funneling national PAC money, over $870,000 of it, to Ohio's 
State candidates--incidentally, all Republican candidates.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record these names and the amounts of 
money they received.

  Ohio Candidates Who Received Direct Contributions From Betsy DeVos' 
                    Federal PAC--All Children Matter

       Blackwell, J. Kenneth & Raga, Thomas, $10,000; Husted, Jon 
     A, $10,000; Raussen, Jim, $7,500; Bacon, Kevin, $6,000; 
     Harris, Bill, $5,000; Montgomery, Betty, $5,000; Taylor, 
     Mary, $5,000; Bubp, Danny, $4,000; Coughlin, Kevin, $4,000; 
     Luther, Brant, $4,000.
       Patton, Thomas F, $4,000; White, Dan, $4000; Adams, John W, 
     $3,000; Bowling, Marcus U, $2,500; Buehrer, Stephen, $2,500; 
     McGregor, Jim, $2,500; Brinkman, Thomas, $2,000; Cousineau, 
     Thomas, $2,000; Fink, Deborah Owens, $2,000; Mandel, Josh, 
     $2,000.
       McLaurin, Donald K, $2,000; Farmer, Kyle J, $1,500; 
     Goodman, David, $1,500; Peterson, Jon M, $1,500; Seitz, 
     William J, $1,500; Setzer, Arlene J, $1,500; Batchelder III, 
     William G, $1,000; Dolan, Matthew J, $1,000; Faber, Keith 
     Lloyd, $1,000; Hite, Cliff, $1,000.
       Jordan, Kris, $1,000; Niehaus, Tom, $1,000; Schindel, 
     Carol-Ann, $1,000; Wagoner, Mark, $1,000; Adams, Richard N, 
     $500; Jones, Shannon, $500; Ohio House Republican Campaign 
     Cmte, $500; Rankin, Tim, $500; Whiston, Tom, $500; Young, 
     Tom, $500.
       Source: The Columbus Dispatch and FollowtheMoney.org

  Ms. KAPTUR. All these candidates pledged to advocate for privatizing 
public school education through vouchers once elected into office.
  The Ohio Election Commission, comprised of an equal number of 
Republicans and Democrats, swiftly and unanimously levied a record fine 
against her organization in 2008. Their decision was subsequently 
vetted and upheld by a Republican judge in a State court.
  Yet, now nearly a decade later, neither Betsy DeVos nor All Children 
Matter has paid their penalty of $5.3 million to the citizens of Ohio.
  Indeed, the State of Ohio prior to her violations had even informed 
Ms. DeVos by issuing a legal opinion that such contributions from her 
national PAC would be illegal to State candidates, and she willfully 
ignored them and that opinion. No one, no matter how wealthy, should be 
above the law.
  And who exactly were the State candidates that received a direct 
campaign contribution from Betsy DeVos' political action committee All 
Children Matter? You will notice a few candidates still serving in Ohio 
office, including Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor, Secretary of State 
Jon Husted, State Treasurer Josh Mandel, and Ohio Senate President 
Keith Faber. Former Ohio gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell 
also received a direct contribution. Mr. Blackwell now leads the 
President-elect's domestic policy transition team.
  In addition, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Betsy 
DeVos gave direct contributions to at least 20 current Members of the 
United States Senate. These are the same Senators who will now confirm 
her for her Secretary of Education position.
  Talk about pay to play and a real need to drain the swamp, the 
President-elect ought to start in his own backyard.
  The $5.3 million fine that Betsy DeVos' political organization owes 
to Ohio could pay for better education for Ohio's children. It is 
outrageous that a candidate for Secretary of Education holds herself 
above the law and fails to make good on outstanding fines imposed 
nearly 10 years ago. Public records indicate she personally has a net 
worth of over $5.1 billion.
  The New York Times today has a front page story by Noam Scheiber that 
includes a quote from a writer and scholar who observes about the life 
of Ms. DeVos.
  Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record this article as well.

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 9, 2017]

  Betsy DeVos, Trump's Education Pick, Plays Hardball With Her Wealth

                           (By Noam Scheiber)

       After Tom Casperson, a Republican state senator from 
     Michigan's Upper Peninsula, began running for Congress in 
     2016, he assumed the family of Betsy DeVos, President-elect 
     Donald J. Trump's nominee to be education secretary, would 
     not oppose him.
       The DeVoses, a dominant force in Michigan politics for 
     decades with a fortune in the billions, had contributed to 
     one of Mr. Casperson's earlier campaigns. But a week before 
     his primary, family members sent $24,000 to one of his 
     opponents, then poured $125,000 into a ``super PAC,'' 
     Concerned Taxpayers of America, that ran ads attacking him.
       The reason, an intermediary told Mr. Casperson: his support 
     from organized labor.
       ``Deceitful, dishonest and cowardly,'' was how Mr. 
     Casperson's campaign described the ads, complaining that the 
     groups running them ``won't say who they are or where their 
     money is coming from.'' On Primary Day, Mr. Casperson went 
     down to defeat.
       In announcing his intention to nominate Ms. DeVos, Mr. 
     Trump described her as ``a brilliant and passionate education 
     advocate.'' Even critics characterized her as a dedicated, if 
     misguided, activist for school reform. But that description 
     understates both the breadth of Ms. DeVos's political 
     interests and the influence she wields as part of her 
     powerful family. More than anyone else who has joined the 
     incoming Trump administration, she represents the combination 
     of wealth, free-market ideology and political hardball 
     associated with a better-known family of billionaires: 
     Charles and David Koch.
       ``They have this moralized sense of the free market that 
     leads to this total program to turn back the ideas of the New 
     Deal, the welfare state,'' Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian who 
     has written extensively about the conservative movement, 
     said, describing the DeVoses.
       Ms. DeVos declined to be interviewed for this article.
       Like the Kochs, the DeVoses are generous supporters of 
     think tanks that evangelize for unrestrained capitalism, like 
     Michigan's Acton Institute, and that rail against unions and 
     back privatizing public services, like the Mackinac Center.
       They have also funded national groups dedicated to cutting 
     back the role of government, including the National Center 
     for Policy Analysis (which has pushed for Social Security 
     privatization and against environmental regulation) and the 
     Institute for Justice (which challenges regulations in court 
     and defends school vouchers). Both organizations have also 
     received money from the Koch family.
       Indeed, the DeVoses' education activism, which favors 
     alternatives to traditional public schools, appears to derive 
     from the same free-market views that inform their suspicion 
     of government. And perhaps more than other right-wing 
     billionaires, the DeVoses couple their seeding of ideological 
     causes with an aggressive brand of political spending. Half a 
     dozen or more extended family members frequently coordinate 
     contributions to maximize their impact.
       In the 2016 cycle alone, according to the Michigan Campaign 
     Finance Network, the family spent roughly $14 million on 
     political

[[Page 510]]

     contributions to state and national candidates, parties, PACs 
     and super PACs.
       All of this would make Ms. DeVos--whose confirmation 
     hearing has been delayed until next week amid mounting 
     pressure that her government ethics review be completed 
     beforehand--very different from past education secretaries.
       ``She is the most emblematic kind of oligarchic figure you 
     can put in a cabinet position,'' said Jeffrey Winters, a 
     political scientist at Northwestern University who studies 
     economic elites. ``What she and the Kochs have in common is 
     the unbridled use of wealth power to achieve whatever 
     political goals they have.''


                        Birth of a Power Couple

       Ms. DeVos, 59, grew up in Holland, Mich., the daughter of a 
     conservative auto parts magnate who was an early founder of 
     the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. 
     When she married Dick DeVos in 1979, it was akin to a merger 
     between two royal houses of western Michigan.
       Her husband's father, Richard Sr., co-founder of the 
     multilevel marketing company Amway, was an active member of 
     the Christian Reformed Church that preached a mix of social 
     conservatism and self-reliance. He once told the church's 
     official magazine that Chicago's poor dwelled in slums 
     because that was ``the way they choose to live,'' according 
     to a Washington Post story from the 1980s.
       A fan of Rolls-Royces and pinkie rings, Richard Sr. wrote 
     books with titles like ``Ten Powerful Phrases for Positive 
     People.''
       A similar air hung over his business. Amway sales 
     representatives, which the company calls ``independent 
     business owners,'' make money both by selling the company's 
     products--everything from perfume to toilet bowl cleaner--and 
     by recruiting other sales representatives.
       The Federal Trade Commission once investigated the company 
     for running a pyramid scheme before concluding that it had 
     misled potential recruits about how much they could expect to 
     earn.
       The flip side of the family's proselytizing for capitalism, 
     according to Professor Phillips-Fein, has been an effort to 
     dismantle much ``that would counterbalance the power of 
     economic elites.''
       Amway funded a nationwide ad campaign in the early 1980s, 
     protesting high taxes and regulations. Not long after, the 
     company pleaded guilty to cheating the Canadian government 
     out of more than $20 million in revenue.
       The family had a more winning public face in Dick DeVos, 
     who combined the practiced empathy of a pitchman with the 
     entitlement of an heir, spending over $30 million on an 
     unsuccessful run for governor of Michigan in 2006. The 
     Detroit Free Press described him that year as the wealthiest 
     man to seek office in the state's modern history.
       Betsy DeVos, who served as chairwoman of the Michigan 
     Republican Party for most of the decade between 1996 and 
     2005, has often played the role of strategist in the 
     relationship. She was a key adviser in her husband's run for 
     governor and publicly brooded that he had been too 
     gentlemanly in his first debate against the incumbent.
       ``He's very good with people, a retail politician who looks 
     you in the eye, shakes your hand, listens to what you say,'' 
     said Randy Richardville, a former Republican leader of the 
     Michigan Senate, describing the couple's strengths. ``I would 
     never underestimate Betsy DeVos in a knife fight.''
       Ms. DeVos has sometimes lacked her husband's finesse, once 
     famously blaming many of the state's economic woes on ``high 
     wages.'' She has won detractors, by their account, by 
     browbeating legislators into voting her way.
       ``Betsy DeVos was like my 4-year-old granddaughter at the 
     time,'' said Mike Pumford, a former Republican state 
     representative who once clashed with her. ``They were both 
     sweet ladies as long as they kept hearing the word `yes.' 
     They turned into spoiled little brats when they were told 
     `no.'''
       But Ms. DeVos has often made up for what she lacks in tact 
     through sheer force of will.
       Mr. Richardville said he and Ms. DeVos disagreed over term 
     limits, which she supported as party chairwoman and he 
     opposed: ``I said, `I don't think you should be setting 
     policy. You should be supporting those of us who do make 
     policy.' But she never backed down.''
       While Dick and Betsy DeVos appear to practice a more 
     tolerant form of Christianity than their parents--Ms. DeVos 
     has spoken out against anti-gay bigotry--as recently as the 
     early 2000s they funded some groups like Focus on the Family, 
     a large ministry that helps set the political agenda for 
     conservative evangelicals. They have also backed groups that 
     promote conservative values to students and Christian 
     education, including one with ties to the Christian Reformed 
     Church.
       Their economic views are strikingly similar to the elder 
     Mr. DeVos's.
       According to federal disclosures, Amway, which Dick DeVos 
     ran between 1993 and 2002, has lobbied frequently over the 
     last 20 years to reduce or repeal the estate tax. Only the 
     top 0.2 percent wealthiest estates paid the tax in 2015.
       The company has also opposed crackdowns on tax shelters.
       Ms. DeVos has been an outspoken defender of unlimited 
     contributions known as soft money, which she described in a 
     1997 editorial as ``hard-earned American dollars that Big 
     Brother has yet to find a way to control.''
       After Congress later passed a major campaign finance reform 
     bill, a nonprofit that Ms. DeVos helped to create and fund 
     masterminded the strategy that produced Citizens United, the 
     2010 Supreme Court decision laying the groundwork for super 
     PACs funded by corporations, unions and individuals to raise 
     and spend unlimited amounts in elections.
       And then there are the family's efforts to rein in the 
     labor movement.
       Through their contributions to think tanks like the 
     Mackinac Center, as well as Mr. DeVos's direct prodding of 
     Republican legislators, the family played a key role in 
     helping pass Michigan's so-called right-to-work legislation 
     in 2012. The legislation largely ended the requirement that 
     workers pay fees to unions as a condition of employment.
       Unions in the state bled members in 2014, the first full 
     year the measure was in effect.
       Allies say the DeVoses fight for their beliefs. ``Betsy and 
     Dick see themselves as principled conservatives,'' said 
     Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. ``It 
     kind of seems healthy and admirable to give resources to 
     folks who are going to fight for causes you believe in.''
       But the fights can appear to be as much about consolidating 
     power as ideology. Unions were arguably the family's most 
     formidable political opponent in Michigan, one of labor's 
     traditional strongholds.


                          Changes in Michigan

       The DeVos family's roots as education activists date back 
     at least to when Richard DeVos Sr. was running Amway and an 
     institute based at the company's headquarters trained 
     teachers to inject free-market principles into their 
     curriculum.
       According to an interview Ms. DeVos gave to Philanthropy 
     magazine, she and her husband became interested in education 
     causes when they began visiting a Christian school that 
     served low-income children in Grand Rapids in the 1980s.
       ``If we could choose the right school for our kids''--by 
     which she appeared to mean primarily private schools--``it 
     only seemed fair that they could do the same for theirs,'' 
     she told the magazine.
       The family spent millions of dollars on a ballot proposal 
     in 2000 asking if Michigan should legalize vouchers, in which 
     students can use taxpayer money to attend private schools.
       Many critics, like the education historian Diane Ravitch, 
     argue that the point of vouchers is to destroy public 
     education and teachers' unions. The group Americans United 
     for Separation of Church and State has documented how 
     conservative Christians have long supported vouchers, which 
     could fund religious schools.
       After voters objected by more than a two-to-one ratio, Dick 
     DeVos gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation saying such 
     efforts would have to shift to state legislatures, where 
     groups backed by deep-pocketed donors could offer ``a 
     political consequence for opposition, and political reward 
     for support of education reform issues.''
       It is not unusual for the wealthy--who devote nearly 50 
     percent of their philanthropic dollars to education, 
     according to the group Wealth-X--to spend aggressively in the 
     political realm to impose their preferred reforms.
       Even by these standards, however, the DeVoses stand out for 
     the amount of money they spend trying to advance their goals 
     through politics rather than philanthropy, such as research 
     into reforms or subsidizing schools.
       As Sarah Reckhow, an expert on education philanthropy at 
     Michigan State University, put it: ``The DeVoses are like: 
     `No, we know what we want. We don't need to have all this 
     window dressing.'''
       Ms. DeVos has led two nonprofits that have spent millions 
     of dollars electing governors and legislators sympathetic to 
     school vouchers around the country.
       Matt Frendewey, a spokesman for one of the groups, said the 
     efforts had frequently been bipartisan, and that the amount 
     of money they had spent has been dwarfed by contributions 
     from teachers' unions opposed to reform. Yet in Michigan, at 
     least, the family's political strategy has not been subtle.
       After he defied Ms. DeVos on a key charter school vote, Mr. 
     Pumford, the former Republican legislator, survived an effort 
     by the Great Lakes Education Project, a nonprofit the DeVoses 
     bankrolled, to defeat him in his 2002 primary.
       But shortly after, the House speaker told him the Education 
     Committee chairmanship he coveted would not be forthcoming. 
     ``I said, `Why?''' Mr. Pumford recalled. ``He said: `You know 
     why. The DeVoses will walk away from us.''' Mr. Pumford 
     added: ``She told me that was going to happen.''
       (Rick Johnson, the House speaker, said he did not recall 
     the conversation but also that he had not promised Mr. 
     Pumford the chairmanship and would not have explained his 
     reasons for withholding it.)
       Over time, the Great Lakes Education Project helped elect 
     Republican majorities

[[Page 511]]

     sympathetic to the DeVoses' agenda. But the DeVoses' 
     lobbyists and operatives also discovered less messy ways to 
     advance legislation.
       Late one night of their last workweek in 2015, the Michigan 
     House and Senate were about to approve some uncontroversial 
     changes to campaign finance law, when the bill abruptly grew 
     by more than 40 pages.
       After the legislators discovered what they had voted for, 
     many said they were horrified.
       Tucked away in the new pages was a provision that would 
     have made it much harder for local bodies like school boards 
     to raise money through property tax increases.
       ``Michigan schools will likely suffer the brunt of the 
     impact because the vast majority rely on periodic voter 
     approval of local operating levy renewals for property 
     taxes,'' the ratings agency Moody's wrote of the measure the 
     following month.
       ``I was fooled into voting for something I opposed,'' said 
     Dave Pagel, a Republican representative. ``I consider it the 
     worst vote I've made.''
       The chief culprits, according to Mr. Pagel and others at 
     the state Capitol when the bill passed, were lobbyists 
     closely tied to the DeVoses.
       Tony Daunt, a spokesman for the Michigan Freedom Fund, a 
     nonprofit headed by the DeVoses' longtime political aide, and 
     whose political spending arm they have funded generously, 
     said the group was ``part of the discussion process with 
     people in the legislature'' about the proposal and ``had 
     consistently expressed support for the policy.''
       The law was later blocked by a federal judge, but the group 
     has vowed to try again.


                           Radical Suspicions

       Ms. DeVos's advocates see in these fights the toughness to 
     take on entrenched opponents of expanding reforms like 
     charter schools and vouchers.
       In promoting Ms. DeVos in The Washington Post, Mitt Romney, 
     the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee, emphasized 
     that her wealth gave her the independence to be ``someone who 
     isn't financially biased shaping education.'' He added, 
     ``DeVos doesn't need the job now, nor will she be looking for 
     an education job later.''
       But critics see someone with an unmistakable agenda. ``The 
     signs are there that she will do something radical,'' said 
     Jack Jennings, a former general counsel for the House 
     education committee. ``Trump wouldn't have appointed this 
     woman for this position if he didn't intend something 
     radical.''

  Ms. KAPTUR. The article states: ``She is the most emblematic kind of 
oligarchic figure you can put in a cabinet position. . . . What she and 
the Kochs have in common is the unbridled use of wealth power to 
achieve whatever political goals they have.''
  If confirmed, Betsy DeVos would be responsible for administering our 
Nation's student loan portfolio and would have to ensure borrowers 
repay their loans in a timely manner. Yet, how can we believe she will 
demonstrate sound judgment in her responsibilities or be a role model 
when her own political organization has blatantly avoided paying 
legally obligated fines for her violations of Ohio's election laws?
  Mr. Speaker, Betsy DeVos' attempt to subvert the law and buy 
influence are diametrically opposed to everything the President-elect 
advised was wrong with America. He wants to drain the swamp. No one in 
America should be above the law, and neither should Betsy DeVos be 
above the law. She ought to pay the $5.3 million she owes the people of 
Ohio.

                          ____________________