The Center for Public Integrity

In the ongoing battle over deficits and the debt ceiling, President Barack Obama has singled out corporate jet owners by calling for an end to their relatively small tax perk. But that’s not all he’s doing to bring highflying executives down to earth: In a move opposed by some traditional allies, the administration is planning to restrict access to a little known program that allows private jets to fly beyond the reach of public scrutiny.

The roots of the initiative go back to the late 1990s, when the Federal Aviation Administration began releasing air traffic data to the airline industry in hopes of improving management of planes and crews. Websites soon started posting the flight patterns of commercial planes and private jets using U.S. airspace and federally subsidized airports.

The availability of this data concerned the National Business Aviation Association and other corporate jet lobbies. In consultation with the NBAA, the FAA created the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program, which since 2000 has enabled private jets to avoid having their movements tracked – in real-time or after the fact – on commercial websites like FlightAware.com. The Obama administration is now planning to severely restrict access to the BARR program, which currently allows 7,000 of the estimated 223,900 active jets to obscure their movements, according to the most recent figures provided by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The Obama campaign released a list Friday of its bundling stars showing that 27 individuals—including Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and Vogue editor Anna Wintour—had already roped in over $500,000 each.Those 27 well-heeled Obama fundraisers alone raised more money for his re-election campaign than any of the Republican presidential candidates except Mitt Romney.

The newly released list of “volunteer fundraisers” identified 244 bundlers who have collected a minimum of $50,000 each for Obama’s campaign (in some instances, couples were grouped together under one listing). Those numbers break down to 87 listings between $50,000-$100,000; 89 had pulled in between $100,000-$200,000; and 41 had raised between $250,000-$500,000.

More than 40 bundlers from 2008 who received government appointments after Obama's election have returned as major fundraisers.

Earlier this year, campaign manager Jim Messina asked about 450 leading fundraisers to bring in $350,000 each by the end of this year.  iWatch News has learned that the bundlers were also told they were expected to pull in the same amount next year— an extraordinary $700,000 per bundler over the course of the president’s re-election effort.

Some of the super bundlers are going even further. At least two fundraisers,  Katzenberg and hedge fund executive Orin Kramer, who have raised $500K each this year as they did in 2008, have also been working to raise unlimited donations for two outside groups that were created earlier this year by a pair of ex-White House aides to help the President win re-election. (The outside groups are Priorities USA and Priorities USA Action which raised between $4 million and $5 million in their first two months of operation en route to a goal of $100 million).

Other notable 2012 bundlers include:

Escalating its exploration of a loan guarantee benefiting a politically connected solar panel maker, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce subpoenaed the Office of Management and Budget Thursday for records revealing how it vetted the first energy loan guarantee under the Obama administration.

The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, in a 14-8 vote on party lines, ordered the subpoena after a majority of lawmakers accused OMB of stonewalling an investigation into a loan guarantee that was announced with fanfare but has since drawn questions from government auditors and analysts. The committee seeks memos to or from the White House involving the loan guarantee.

The $535 million loan guarantee, awarded in 2009 to California-based Solyndra Inc., has become a flashpoint amid larger scrutiny over how well, and how fairly, the Department of Energy has doled out taxpayer dollars to bankroll green energy projects.

In all, DOE has announced 20 conditional commitments and completed 11 loan guarantees, infusing projects across the country with $11 billion in taxpayer backing. Several Energy Department guarantees, loans and grants have bankrolled companies whose financial backers include major supporters of the president, iWatch News and ABC News reported earlier this year.

Solyndra’s prime financiers include Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser, a “bundler” of campaign donations who raised at least $50,000 for the president’s 2008 election effort and has often visited the White House. Kaiser has declined interview requests about the Solyndra loan guarantee. The company said politics played no role in its award, and Energy Department officials said each loan guarantee was awarded after careful review.

The growing controversy about alleged illegal hacking by employees of News Corp. has laid bare the company’s broad influence on British politics writ large. Over the past three decades, though, Rupert Murdoch and his media empire have been plenty active on this side of the pond, including a cool $1 million contribution to the Republican Governors Association last year.

And now the scope of that influence is starting to stir the political pot in Washington. In the wake of the scandal and a blossoming FBI investigation, some critics are already calling on lawmakers who have received money from the company’s corporate PAC and its chairman and CEO to return it. And others are demanding that Congress and the Obama administration investigate whether News Corp. employees have engaged in similar kinds of hacking stateside.  

Over the last almost quarter century, News Corp. has made a lot of friends on both sides of the aisle. Murdoch, naturalized in 1985, made his first major federal donations in 1987 — beginning his political donations with a pair of $1,000 checks to a Democrat, then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. This would prove an anomaly, however, as over $300,000 of the more than $490,000 in contributions he’s personally made since have gone to Republicans and GOP committees, according to a Center for Public Integrity iWatch News analysis of campaign finance data.  

The number of former lobbyists now working for lawmakers has increased more than 100 percent from the last Congress, according to a report from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The 111^th Congress included 60 former lobbyists; the number has increased to 128 in the 112^th. In addition to the large increase, CRP noted that more former lobbyists are working for Republicans than for Democrats. Given the current Republican majority in the House, this is not altogether surprising. However, only 55 percent of the current Congress is Republican and a disproportionate 63 percent of former lobbyists work for Republican representatives and senators.

The issue of hiring former lobbyists as staffers is even more apparent among freshman members of Congress, the report said.

The trend extends beyond the offices of senators and representatives. Some of the congressional staffers who once worked as lobbyists are now employed as congressional committee staffers, in some cases serving on the same committees they once lobbied.

The House Energy and Commerce, House Financial Services and Senate Energy and Natural Resources committees each employ the most former lobbyists, at least 12. Several former lobbyists once held extensive client lists, most notably Charles Kinney, who represented 111 clients before joining the staff of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

Scores of bundlers who have corralled at least $25,000 for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign will be encouraged to raise much more with Olympic-style incentives at the Republican’s multimillion-dollar homes on Aug. 15 and Aug. 22.

The bicoastal bashes, which will feature barbeque meals at his Lake Winnipesaukee residence near Wolfeboro, N.H., and at his ocean-front property in La Jolla, Calif., are part of the campaign’s effort to reward big fundraisers who have joined its “Medalist Program.”

Romney, who ran the host committee for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake, plans to use Olympic medal titles—gold, silver and bronze—to honor his biggest bundlers. The campaign has set fundraising goals for the bundlers of $50,000 to earn a bronze, $100,000 for silver and $250,000 to score the gold, according to a campaign document.

Romney raised $18.25 million in the second quarter, a total considerably lower than the $30 million to $50 million that some of his big fundraisers predicted earlier in the spring.

While Romney’s take wasn’t what his fundraisers hoped for, it still was way ahead of what his nearest rivals for the nomination have reported to date. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s campaign has said it raised just $4.2 million in the same three-month period.

Further, Romney’s campaign is expected to get a nice boost from the $12 million raised in the first six months of this year by a “super PAC,” Restore Our Future PAC, which has said publicly it is backing him for president. The PAC is being spearheaded by a few top aides from Romney’s abortive 2008 bid for the GOP nomination, including Carl Forti who was political director for that campaign. Unlike his presidential campaign, the PAC can accept unlimited donations but is barred from coordinating any activities with the campaign.

As President Obama and his Republican challengers raced towards the June 30 reporting deadline, a flurry of desperate-sounding emails went out to Obama supporters around the country.

“Anyone worth their salt in politics knows tonight is one of the most important tests we'll face as a campaign this year” bellowed an email from Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, sent hours ahead of the midnight deadline and encouraging donors to give $5, $10 or $15 extra.

But as the campaign begged for small bills, the president, the first lady and the vice president were hosting luxury fundraisers where huge checks were collected, a stark contrast to the calls for small donors. The Obamas and Joe Biden have combined to attend 45 fundraising events since early April, an impressive number for this early in the cycle.

And while a handful of Wall Street bundlers have turned on Obama because of financial regulation, concerns about the vitality of the Obama fundraising machine will be dwarfed by the golden asset in its arsenal — the power of the Presidency.

The Obama campaign hoped to raise $60 million in the second quarter of 2011. To reach that stunning total, the Obama campaign worked every angle—doubling up and sometimes tripling the fundraisers in a single day for the president, as Michelle Obama and Biden became more important.

“Certainly, the office of president provides an enormous boost most of the time,” says Allison Hayward vice president of policy at the Center for Competitive Politics. Since 1936, only three incumbent presidents – Ford, Carter and George H.W. Bush – have lost re-election.

A foreign subsidiary of Koch Industries has been fined $4,700 by the Federal Election Commission for making 12 illegal donations totaling $26,800 to seven non-federal committees over a four-year period.

Invista S.a.r.l., a Koch subsidiary which is registered in Luxembourg but headquartered in Wichita, Kan., came to the FEC voluntarily with information that it made the illegal donations during the years 2005 through 2009.

Under federal election law, foreign companies are barred from making donations to candidates or committees in federal, state or local elections.

According to an FEC settlement with Invista that was posted Friday, the contributions included six that were made in 2007 to state candidates, a state PAC and a party committee totaling $22,100. The others six were made in 2005, 2006 and 2009.

All the donations were made from Invista’s corporate funds, which were in U.S. banks but originated abroad, according to the FEC.

Invista was acquired by Koch, one of the country’s largest private companies, in 2004 from DuPont. Invista makes and distributes a wide range of fibers and fabrics. All of Invista’s senior employees are U.S. citizens.

Campaign finance attorneys note that smaller civil penalties are often levied when the FEC is contacted with disclosures, which Koch did in August 2010. A counsel that provides Koch with political law compliance services alerted the company to the contributions several months earlier and an internal probe was initiated.

All of the donations have been returned except for one which the company must retrieve as part of its FEC agreement.

Koch is a major player in conservative political circles, through the contributions of its corporate PAC as well as multimillion-dollar donations from the billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch.

Tim Pawlenty may not have great name recognition but he does have one very important thing for a presidential candidate: a hand in the pocket of Texas billionaire Bob J. Perry.

Perry, a homebuilding tycoon with a $600 million fortune, is a high roller among Republican donors.

• On Sept. 23, 2010 Perry and his wife gave $60,000 to Freedom First, Pawlenty’s state-based political action committees in New Hampshire and Iowa.
• Perry has given nearly $38 million to candidates and political groups outside Texas since 2000, according to records analyzed by The Texas Tribune.
• In that same time frame, Perry has contributed $28 million to more than 400 candidates and political committees in his home state.

Perry also has a reputation for financing negative ads. He made national headlines in 2004 with his mega contributions to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which ran a controversial ad campaign that questioned Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Perry contributed $4.45 million to underwrite the attack ads that helped sink Kerry’s presidential bid.

Less well-known is a similar attack ad campaign that Perry bankrolled in Minnesota in 2006, when Pawlenty was in danger of losing his office as Minnesota governor.

Pawlenty’s challenger, Mike Hatch, maintained a small but consistent lead over the incumbent governor going into the final weeks of the race. Pawlenty “needed a Hail Mary,” said Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party and Hatch’s campaign manager in 2006..

As part of their recently-launched road show, former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh and ex-Bush White House chief of staff Andy Card wrote an opinion piece promoting a bipartisan message on regulatory reform. 

The op-ed in The Washington Times, headlined “Dialing Back Obama Rulemaking Machine,” neglects to mention that Bayh and Card are both paid advisers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

iWatch News wrote about the Bayh-Card “odd couple” road show in early June.

Here are a few tidbits from the op-ed: “As the country emerges from one of the most serious economic downturns in recent history, the last thing we need are more regulations that impose heavy burdens on job creators…This enormous onslaught of new regulations could well cost hundreds of billions of dollars, hamper our recovery, undermine our competitiveness and cost jobs.”