GOP Donors Seek To Oust Michigan Tea Party Congressmen Over Shutdown

BY JEFF SPROSS/Think Progress

The growing rift between Tea Party conservatives and the moneyed GOP establishment may have just broken out into open hostilities.

According to a letter obtained by The Hill, prominent Republican donors in Michigan are asking for financial help to oust one of the state’s incumbent GOP congressmen, Rep. Justin Amash (MI). Their aid will be going to Amash’s challenger in the upcoming Republican primary, businessman Brian Ellis.

Seven individuals signed the letter, including prominent Michigan businessmen Mark Bissell, J.C. Huizenga and Mike Jandernoa. The move is punishment for Amash’s participation in the infamous “suicide caucus” that insisted on undoing Obamacare as the price for keeping the government opening, scuttled a deal House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) tried to put together, and thus precipitated the recent government shutdown. “[Amash] and a small group of like-minded legislators rejected Speaker Boehner’s plea to pass legislation requiring Congress and the president be subject to ObamaCare, and put on hold the special new tax on medical equipment,” the letter states. “This irresponsible action hurt over 50 great West Michigan businesses and was part of the chaos that led the nation to the edge of default.”

Amash is among the hardest of hard-right Tea Party congressmen in the legislature. He played a key role in the January effort to oust Boehner as House speaker, he’s pushing legislation to restrict abortion access in Washington D.C., and he denied the severity of a debt ceiling breach during the default standoff. On the health care front, Amash has dismissed concerns that a repeal of Obamacare would leave those with pre-existing conditions without recourse, and fought against the law’s expansion of Medicaid in Michigan — which would bring coverage to 470,000 people in the state currently going uninsured.

The turn against Amash among Michigan donors is part of a broader anti-Tea-Party revolt by the GOP establishment around the country, largely driven by anger over the shutdown debacle. Discontent with the Tea Party’s radicalism is growing amongst political donors on both sides of the aisle, Republican moderates have vowed to speak out more against the more extreme members of their party, and fundraising for the Tea Party legislators associated with the suicide caucus dropped by two-thirds in the July-to-September quarter.

But Amash is not without supporters. Dean Clancy, the vice president of public policy at the conservative group FreedomWorks, told The Hill, “We have heard that the K-Street establishment wants to knock him off — and we intend to defend him punch-for-punch.”

Montana Bill Would Give Corporations The Right To Vote

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

A bill introduced by Montana state Rep. Steve Lavin would give corporations the right to vote in municipal elections:

Provision for vote by corporate property owner. (1) Subject to subsection (2), if a firm, partnership, company, or corporation owns real property within the municipality, the president, vice president, secretary, or other designee of the entity is eligible to vote in a municipal election as provided in [section 1].

(2) The individual who is designated to vote by the entity is subject to the provisions of [section 1] and shall also provide to the election administrator documentation of the entity’s registration with the secretary of state under 35-1-217 and proof of the individual’s designation to vote on behalf of the entity.

The idea that “corporations are people, my friend” as Mitt Romney put it, is sadly common among conservative lawmakers. Most significantly of all, the five conservative justices voted inCitizens United v. FEC to permit corporations to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Actually giving corporations the right to vote, however, is quite a step beyond what even this Supreme Court has embraced.

The bill does contain some limits on these new corporate voting rights. Most significantly, corporations would not be entitled to vote in “school elections,” and the bill only applies to municipal elections. So state and federal elections would remain beyond the reach of the new corporate voters.

In fairness to Lavin’s fellow lawmakers, this bill was tabled shortly after it came before a legislative committee, so it is unlikely to become law. A phone call to Lavin was not returned as of this writing.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy, Lavin was a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) now defunct Public Safety and Elections Task Force. Last year, pressure from progressive groups forced ALEC to disband this task force, which, among other things, pushed voter suppression laws.

The Supreme Court Will Hear A Republican Party Lawsuit To Make Citizens United Even Worse

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

The Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United v. FEC enabled wealthy corporations to spend unlimited money to change the course of American elections, and a subsequent lower court decision gave the green light to super PACsfunded by unlimited donations from millionaires, billionaires and corporations. Today, the Supreme Court announced it would hear another case — brought by none other than the Republican National Committee — that would go even further towards transforming American democracy into the Wild West.

Despite recent election-buying decisions permitting unlimited donations to super PACs and other groups that exist independently of campaigns and political parties, federal law still limits individual donations to candidates and to the parties themselves. In the next election cycle, these limits include a $2,600 cap on individual donations to a single candidate, and an overall limit of $123,200 in contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations. The Republican Party’s lawsuit seeks to eliminate most of these limits on election-buying — most importantly, by removing the $123,200 cap on total contributions.

As the unanimous lower court decision upholding this cap explained, removing it would corrupt our election system even more by allowing billionaires to launder as much money as they want through political party committees to individual candidates:

Eliminating the aggregate limits means an individual might, for example, give half-a-million dollars in a single check to a joint fundraising committee comprising a party’s presidential candidate, the party’s national party committee, and most of the party’s state party committees. After the fundraiser, the committees are required to divvy the contributions to ensure that no committee receives more than its permitted share, but because party committees may transfer unlimited amounts of money to other party committees of the same party, the half-a-million-dollar contribution might nevertheless find its way to a single committee’s coffers. That committee, in turn, might use the money for coordinated expenditures, which have no “significant functional difference” from the party’s direct candidate contributions. The candidate who knows the coordinated expenditure funding derives from that single large check at the joint fundraising event will know precisely where to lay the wreath of gratitude.

Significantly, this opinion was written by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is one of the most conservative judges in the country. Brown previously authored an opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect, and she once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.”

As a lower court judge, however, Brown was also required to follow Supreme Court precedents. The five conservative justices who gave us Citizens United, by contrast, are not.

Sen. Carl Levin ‘worried’ by influx of dark money

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said Monday that he was anxious about the influence of secret money in the 2012 elections.

“The thing that worries me frankly the most is the huge amount of hidden money which is going to get into — it already is in — the Romney campaign,” he said on Current TV’s War Room.

“The Super PAC money worries me. The fact that Mr. Romney will not disclose who is bundling his money, he is keeping that secret as well… It’s bad enough that we have these unlimited amounts of money that go into Super PACs.”

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling struck down key provisions of the federal McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law and gave rise to Super PACS, which can raise an unlimited amount of money to influence federal elections as long as they do not directly coordinate with a candidate’s campaign.

But Levin noted that although Congress could not limit political contributions, they could still require Super PACs to disclose their donors.

“We have a bill that would do that, that was filibustered by the Republicans and we could not overcome the filibuster,” he explained.

Watch video, courtesy of Current TV, below:

WSU professor launches petition to require corporations to disclose political spending

By Dawson Bell/Detroit Free Press

LANSING - Wayne State University law professor Jocelyn Benson kicked off a petition drive to amend the Michigan constitution today that would require corporations to instantly disclose spending on political communications, a change she said is needed to prevent "shadowy organizations" from hijacking elections.

Benson, the 2010 Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, was joined at a state Capitol news conference by representatives of Common Cause and labor unions to announce a goal of collecting 450,000 signatures to place the issue before voters in November.

Benson said U.S. Supreme Court rulings had opened the door to vast amounts of undisclosed spending by corporations.

The ballot campaign will send a signal that "the era of unlimited campaign contributions without transparency is over."

Benson and her allies cited the court's 2010 decision in a case called Citizens United, which struck down portions of a federal ban on electioneering by corporations, unions and non-profit organizations. Benson said the state constitutional amendment would apply only to corporations because, she said, unions are already required to disclose political spending. She also said she believed the amendment would comport with the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United and other political speech cases.

The campaign for the Corporate Accountability Act will be funded by "grassroots supporters," Benson said, without ruling out the possibility of donations from unions and wealthy individuals.

Matt Frendewey, spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party attended the news conference, and called it the "most hypocritical...ever."

The campaign, he said won't comply with the disclosure requirements they want to impose on corporations, and Common Cause, like many non-profits, engages in substantial poltical and lobbying activities without disclosing its donor base.

Benson said the language of the proposed amendment would be available on the campaign website athttp://www.rightoknowmichigan.org.

Top GOP Donor Claims SC Gov. Haley Illegally ‘Exploited Her Public Office For Personal Financial Gain’

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

A top Republican donor who helped recruit former Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) to run for South Carolina’s top job filed a lawsuit accusing current Gov. Nikki Haley (R) of trading off her former job in the state legislature to earn big corporate paychecks. If the allegations against Haley are true, she may have earned as much as $150,000 from wealthy interest groups eager to enlist a sitting lawmaker as an advocate for their interests.

According to the GOP donor’s lawsuit, Haley failed to disclose $42,500 in secret income she earned from a company called Wilbur Smith Associates, and she failed to recuse herself from a vote that financially benefited Wilbur Smith. Haley also took a $110,000 a year job from a hospital company and then allegedly worked as an illegal lobbyist for the company while she was a sitting lawmaker:

The lawsuit accuses Haley, first elected in 2004 to represent Lexington in the House, of lobbying the state Department of Health and Environment Control on behalf of Lexington Medical, as it sought permission for a new open-heart surgery center. Haley and hospital officials previously have said her job as a fundraiser – a $110,000-a-year job the hospital’s CEO created for her in August 2008 – had nothing to do with the heart center.

But the lawsuit points to an August 2008 email between Haley and her boss.Asked about a meeting on the heart center, she replies, “We have some work to do not only to switch votes but to hold the ones we have. We are as close as we are going to get and can’t afford to leave one stone unturned. … Fingers crossed!”

If these allegations prove true, they are quite serious. There is a clear and serious conflict of interest when a lawmaker is allowed to influence matters that benefit their employer — especially when the lawmaker is allowed to keep many of the details of that arrangement secret.

Corporate money wasn't enough to save Scott

By David Holtz/Progress Michigan

When voters in Genesee County’s 51st state House District fired Paul Scott Tuesday for cutting education funding and other political crimes they defeated a huge right-wing money machine intent on grinding down public schools.  Into the maw of the education shredder was fed more than $100,000 in support of Scott —maybe lots more when the final tally comes in.  

Conservative education diva Michelle Rhee and the thoroughly rejected DeVos clan rightly saw Scott as their champion in the Legislature and spared no expense in their failed effort to save him from voters’ wrath.  Eclectablog detailed their big bucks handiwork on Election Day.

I wanted to dig a little more into the recall money story, particularly the role the 1% played.  Since Scott’s defeat Tuesday, Republican talking points indicate that the election was bought by teachers, or “special interests” in their message frame.  The corporate media hasn’t been much better, at least in the run-up to the election.  The Free Press mentioned Scott being supported by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.  But the chamber has to get the campaign cash from somewhere. So who were the corporations behind the chamber’s spending on behalf of Scott?  Again, Eclectablog has details on many of them, but one in particular received less notice and stands out: Meijer.  

Meijer inc. pumped $25,000 into a Michigan Chamber of Commerce political action committee and another $25,000 into a front group for the DeVos clan’s right-wing education privatization crusade, the Great Lakes Education Project.   Both the chamber and GLEP PACs then spent money in support of Scott. Meijer isn’t alone among corporate interests whose money found their way into the Scott recall election, but they are the biggest corporate financial backers I’ve discovered by far. 

Other corporate money linked to the recall election in support of Scott include:  Jackson National Life Insurance ($10,000), Two Men & A Truck ($5,000), Amway Global ($5,000), Honigman, Miller, Schwartz & Cohn law firm ($2,500), First National Bank in Kalamazoo ($1,000), Kar’s Nuts ($1,000),  Granger Construction Company ($1,000) and West Shore Bank ($1,000).  All gave to the chamber’s political action committee. Moreover, the Realtors PAC ($10,250), Blue Cross Blue Shield ($2,500), Michigan Beer and Wine wholesalers ($2,750) and AT&T ($1,000) all gave money directly to Scott’s campaign.   

All told, more than $150,000 from corporations, corporate PACs, CEOs or their families ended up funding, directly or indirectly, the failed campaign to save Scott.  And, of course, the CEO in Chief—Gov. Rick Snyder—put his political capital and political cash on the line.  Besides campaigning for Scott, the One Tough Nerd PAC gave the Scott campaign $2,124. 

So why would the 1% spend so heavily to keep one politician from being fired by voters?   I think it’s about greed and fear.   These CEOs got a $1.8 billion tax cut from the likes of Paul Scott.   The fear:  recalling Scott could mean that corporate greed is no longer good with voters--especially if it means their kids end up with schools that suck because of budget cuts.

Just Three Corporate Front Groups Spent 13 Times As Much As The Entire Labor Movement To Buy Judicial Elections

By Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate money in American elections, the decision’s defenders claimed this wasn’t such a big deal because unions could also take advantage of the decision. A new report by three leading voting rights and judicial independence groups gives the lie to this claim. According to the report, just three corporate interest groups — The Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Alabama, and the Illinois Civil Justice League spent more than 13 times as much trying to influence state supreme court elections as the entire labor movement:

The report focuses on the 2009-10 cycle, so it does not include the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race where incumbent Justice David Prosser narrowly defeated a progressive challenger after corporate front groups rode to his rescue with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of funds.

Scott Brown Taps Wall Street For Cash In Advance Of Possible Elizabeth Warren Challenge

By Amanda Terkel/Huffy Post

WASHINGTON -- As Democrats urge Elizabeth Warren, one of Wall Street's most public foes, to seek a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts next year, the financial industry is already throwing its support behind the seat's current occupant, Sen. Scott Brown (R), giving him nearly $315,000 in the most recent fundraising quarter.

The contributions from people and interests associated with the financial industry represented nearly 16 percent of the approximately $2 millionBrown raised in the second quarter, according to his filings with the Federal Elections Commission. $48,000 of the financial contributions came from political action committees.

The donations, which came in between April and the end of June, were just below what Brown took in during the first quarter of 2012. Between January and the end of March, Brown raised $404,206 from the financial industry. During the first quarter, he received the third-highest amount of money from this sector of any senator or senatorial candidate.

This week, President Obama announced that he would not be nominating Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), freeing her up for a possible Senate run. Warren, a law professor at Harvard University, has lived in Massachusetts since the 1990s.

Brown's fundraising obviously came before Obama made his announcement, but Democrats have been floating her as their ideal candidate for months.

On Monday, Massachusetts Democrats said they would be "thrilled" if she were to be on the ticket in 2012. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a petition to draft her and isalready fundraising on her behalf.

Warren's work was the inspiration for the CFPB, and progressives view her as one of their strongest advocates for working families and financial regulations. At the same time, congressional Republicans and many Wall Street entities have fiercely opposed her, with GOP senators saying they would block her nomination to head the CFPB at all costs.

"Scott Brown is Wall Street's favorite -- and for good reason," said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Matt Canter. "He did their bidding behind closed doors during financial reform and he looks out for their interests every day, voting nearly 90 percent of the time with Mitch McConnell."

Brown's office did not return a request for comment, but National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brian Walsh pointed out that in the last election cycle, Democrats were the top recipients of financial industry donations. In 2012, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is leading in financial donations.

"It really smacks of desperation to watch Senate Democrats attack Scott Brown on a piece of legislation that they themselves also voted for, which President Obama signed into law and which Wall Street opposed," said Walsh. "It's also stunningly hypocritical when you consider that just days ago President Obama was in New York City raising campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and Senate Democrats themselves have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street. But this is the type of misleading mudslinging voters in Massachusetts will have to get used to because Democrats in Washington know they can't beat Scott Brown fair and square."

Financial donations to Brown also spiked last summer, as Congress was considering financial regulatory reform. As the Boston Globe reported, between mid-June and early-July 2010, Brown took in $140,000 from banks and investment firms and their executives, which was 400 percent more than the average received by other Republican senators during that same time period.

Brown eventually voted for the legislation, but not before extracting key concessions to benefit the financial industry in his state. As Newsweek wrote at the time, Brown "managed to dramatically weaken the 'Volcker rule' barring banks from speculative proprietary trading, proposing a 2 percent exemption (which conference chair Sen. Chris Dodd then generously raised to 3 percent), and he got the Democrats to quash a planned $19 billion rainy-day tax on banks as well."

In a recent poll conducted for Brown and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Brown leads Warren by a 53-28 percent margin among likely 2012 voters.

Romney Takes More Lobbyist Campaign Cash Than The Rest Of GOP Field Combined

By Marie Diamond/Think Progress

It’s no secret that Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) strategy for winning the Republican presidential nomination relies heavily on amassing more campaign cash than his fellow contenders. The GOP frontrunner has come under scrutiny in the past few weeks for several shady contributions from anonymous donors and political action committees. As ThinkProgress has reported, Romney’s biggest campaign donors are Wall Street bankers representing the very firms that caused the financial crisis, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.

Now new financial disclosure forms filed at the end of July reveal that Romney has raked inmore campaign dough from lobbyists than all of the other Republican candidates combined:

According to disclosure forms filed at the end of July, 61 registered lobbyists and five lobbyist-linked political action committees contributed $137,650 to Romney’s campaign between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2011. The former Massachusetts governor raised more money from lobbyists during this period than all of his competitors combined.

The other Republican candidates who received contributions from lobbyists in the first half of 2011 were, in order of most money received, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty ($63,204), former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman ($31,600), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) ($25,500), former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum ($8,800), and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) ($125). The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) do not accept contributions from registered lobbyists.

Chart of lobbyist contributions, courtesy of Huffington Post.

Romney, a former venture capitalist who made his lucrative career by slashing jobs, has also relied on fundraising by Tea Party billionaire David Koch and a lobbyist for a robo-signingforeclosure mill. He’s also taken an early lead among the top bundlers who raised money for George W. Bush and John McCain.

Voters Would Change Constitution To Limit Corporate Spending In Elections

By George Zornick When the Supreme Court invalidated a decades-long ban on corporate spending in federal elections in their Citizens United decision, it was by the narrowest of margins — only one justice. The public is less split on the issue, however. A new poll by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which was provided to the Huffington Post, shows that by a double-digit margin, voters want Congress to use a constitutional amendment to overturn that decision and once again restrict corporations from directly spending on elections.

Forty-six percent of voters said that “Congress should consider drastic measures such as a constitutional amendment overturning” Citizens United, while 36 percent disagreed. Only a fifth of voters were undecided on the matter. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) has already authored such an amendment, and told the Huffington Post, “I really concluded that the Supreme Court actually put the challenge out to us, here in the Congress. They said…Congress, you have no authority to regulate. And when the Court says that so directly, it only leaves us one choice.” Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) are also behind the amendment, which enjoys the strong support of many law professors and former attorneys general.

Short of a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states, the DISCLOSE Act offers another possible remedy to the worst aspects of Citizens United. Today in Roll Call, Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank wrote a stinging op-ed calling on Republicans to support DISCLOSE:

The first is the failure of any Republican Senator to step up and support the DISCLOSE Act, to bring sunlight to the outrageous, anonymous huge funders who played a major role in the 2010 campaigns, hiding behind the cloak of 501(c)(4)s run by groups cynically manipulating weak IRS enforcement of the law. [...]

So where are the previous champions of campaign finance reform? Where is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose greatest legislative accomplishment was given a sharp stick in the eye by a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court? Where are previous supporters of reform — and professed supporters of disclosure — such as Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Scott Brown (Mass.)? And most important, where is Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who has always been an independent voice, whose Snowe-Jeffords amendment to the campaign reform law was the provision most assaulted by the Citizens United case, who stood up to immense pressure from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican leaders in 2002 to do the right thing?

With this kind of pressure building, PCCC cofounder Adam Green thinks it’s a ripe time for action. “It’s time to stop thinking small-bore. The solution to Citizens United is not merely disclosure, it’s to overturn Citizens United — and even last November’s Republican-skewed electorate agrees,” he told the Huffington Post.

New Report Reveals Health Insurance Industry Pumped $86 Million Into The U.S. Chamber To Kill Reform

By Lee Fang This morning, Bloomberg reporter Drew Armstrong broke an incredible story revealing that

health insurance companies, like UnitedHealth and CIGNA, funneled $86.2 million into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009 to pay for the Chamber’s multifaceted campaign to kill President Obama’s health reform legislation. In January of this year, the National Journal’s Peter Stone reported that insurers had pumped $20 million into the Chamber for its anti-health reform campaign. Armstrong’s report exposes the true extent to which insurers worked to fool the public and defeat health reform. However, the report also poses new questions about the role of insurance companies in the health reform debate.

Why did insurance companies try to hide their donations to the Chamber’s anti-health reform campaign? Given their own unpopularity and Obama’s pledge to be the first leader to successfully reform America’s broken health system, the health insurance industry hatched a plan to fundamentally deceive the public, the press, and politicians. Instead of fighting reform tooth and nail, the insurance industry worked to manipulate the process and ultimately kill reforms by adopting what ThinkProgress termed “The Duplicitous Campaign.” In public, health insurance lobbyists and executives promised to support reform and work closely with reform advocates. The top health insurance lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, went to the White House early in the reform debate and promised Obama, “You have our commitment to play, to contribute and to help pass health-care reform this year.”

In private, the health insurance industry worked with conservative think tanks and media, right-wing front groups, and highly ideological trade associations like the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber to kill the bill. By using third party groups and ideological cover, the health insurance industry sought to trick Americans into hating reform. In September of 2009, while many in the media still believed insurance executives were honestly supporting reform, ThinkProgress released a report detailing the ways in which the health insurance industry secretly worked to undermine the process and poison public opinion (read it here). We also produced a video with health insurance whistle-blower Wendell Potter, who explained how insurers control the debate to defeat reform:

ThinkProgress busted several anti-reform groups, like Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights and Center for Medicine in the Public Interest as industry-created fronts used to deceive the public. As ThinkProgress also first reported, health insurance companies like WellPoint and Blue Cross Blue Shield paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-reform talking heads like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In December of 2009, ThinkProgress produced an exclusive investigation showing how health insurance executives are also secretly working to undermine and undo reform on the state level by orchestrating state-based constitutional challenges to the law. The question for the press and for politicians becomes: we now know that health insurance companies absolutely lied to the public about its role in the reform process in 2009. How much are health insurers funding efforts to repeal the law and weaken health reform regulations?

According to a new report by HCAN, a pro-reform group, health insurers posted a 22 percent increase in profits for 2010, largely by shedding customers. How much of that money — money from health insurance premiums — is being used on right-wing lobbying campaigns instead of actual treatments and health care for the sick?

Rep. Bachus’ Message To Banks: Give Your Money To GOP And Make Me Chairman Of Financial Reform

By Pat Garofalo There have already been significant rumblings from Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee about revisiting the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill should control of the House switch in November. Particular ire has been reserved for the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which House Republicans have threatened to defund before it even gets off the ground.

The GOP’s zeal for repeal has led to an influx of money from the financial services industry. And according to Politico, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who is slated to take over the House Financial Service Committee should Republicans gain a majority, told a crowd of 100 financial services lobbyists that they should be donating to Republicans, since Dodd-Frank “hammered them”:

When Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama stepped in front of 100 financial services lobbyists at the Capitol Hill Club last month, he asked for an equal chunk of their campaign cash — and made clear he was watching closely. It is hard to believe, he told the crowd, that some in their industry were still giving more to Democrats than Republicans after, he said, Democrats hammered them with over-reaching Wall Street reform legislation, people familiar with the presentation said. Bachus told the group, for instance, that the Independent Community Bankers of America had given 68 percent of its contributions to Democrats, according to a lobbyist who was present.

And evidently Bachus’ spiel worked, as Independent Community Bankers of America Executive Vice President Steve Verdier said that “his group has started giving more heavily to Republicans and will end up giving 55 percent of its money to Democrats, down from the nearly 70 percent mark.”

But even if the ICBA gives a majority of its money to Democrats, it will be the exception in this cycle. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, “Republican candidates received 34 million dollars in donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since January compared to 23 million dollars given to Democrats.”

And when it comes to America’s “too big to fail” banks, as The Wonk Room explained, donations are all skewing towards the Republicans. For instance, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs are all giving a majority of their donations this cycle to the GOP.

Revealed: More Corporate Donations To The U.S. Chamber’s Partisan Attack Fund

By Lee Fang Today, the New York Times builds on research published by ThinkProgress by noting that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is mostly funded by a small group of large corporations. The Chamber has tried to lie about its identity for years, absurdly telling the media that it represents 3 million businesses. Then after being caught with no proof of such membership, it modified that number to 300,000 — but then claimed small businesses were the true driver of the Chamber’s member rolls. But the Times correctly points out that in 2008, the Chamber received the bulk of its donations from only 45 companies, including firms like Goldman Sachs, Edward Jones, Alpha Technologies, Chevron Texaco and Aegon.

Many corporations pay regular dues to the Chamber, but pitch in more during election cycles or particular lobbying campaigns. For instance, on top of its regular $100,000 commitment of yearly dues, health insurance giant Aetna joined other health insurers to funnel $20 million to the Chamber to kill health reform. Similarly, Fox News parent company News Corporation gave an additional $1 million to the Chamber for its attack campaign this midterm election. While ThinkProgress forced the Chamber to acknowledge that it receives foreign funds to its 501(c)(6) account used for attack ads, the Chamber refuses to disclose any of its other donors or how exactly it funds its nasty attack ads. Using public corporate records, ThinkProgress has found more dues-paying members of the Chamber. The numbers below reflect a bare minimum, and in many cases these corporations have paid ten times the amount of their regular dues to the Chamber in the past two years:

– Microsoft’s corporate disclosures state that the company paid the Chamber up to $999,999 in 2009 and up to $999,999 in 2010 in its minimum dues.

– Procter and Gamble paid the Chamber $3.2 million in 2009.

– Outsourcing giant CSC, which specializes in IT outsourcing, paid the Chamber at least $100,000 in 2009 and $100,000 in 2010.

– Intel paid the Chamber at least $100,000 in yearly dues ($100,000 in 2010, and what appears to be $100,000 in 2009).

– Drug company Merck paid the Chamber $234,000 in 2008, and still counts itself as a dues-paying member of the Chamber.

– Utility company Dominion Resources gave the Chamber $100,000 in 2009.

– On the Chamber’s Egypt Business Council website, Apache Corporation, British American Tobacco, The Blackstone Group, The Boeing Company, Cargill USA, CitiGroup, The Coca-Cola Company, ExxonMobil, Google, Microsoft Corporation, PepsiCo, Intel Corporation, Monsanto Company, Pfizer Inc, Philip Morris International combined committed an additional $375,000 to the Chamber for 2009-2010.

Earlier this year, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue admitted to ThinkProgress that CitiGroup, a bailed out financial conglomerate that still has not paid back taxpayer TARP funds, is a dues-paying member of the Chamber. Many bailed out banks are in fact dues-paying members of the Chamber. A Huffington Post crowd-sourced study of the Chamber found that there are dozens of other large corporations that have indicated membership in the Chamber, but have refused to confess their level of involvement. The Chamber has shilled for BP, and Donohue said after BP’s spill that taxpayers should pay for the clean up. Indeed, BP admitted membership, but has not disclosed how much they pay to the Chamber.

As a ThinkProgress investigation found, at least 80 foreign businesses have been paying the Chamber at least $885,000 in yearly dues for the last two years. The money went directly to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6), the same account the Chamber is now using to run a $75 million attack campaign against Democrats. As we have shown, many of the foreign corporations have a direct stake in American public policy; for instance the Chamber has been the most vigorous lobbying operation in DC to promote outsourcing of American jobs. Of course, many other corporation join the Chamber to benefit from its right-wing corporate lobbying campaign, like keeping corporate tax loopholes open (Chamber members CitiGroup, ExxonMobil and Bank of America already paid no corporate income taxes last year) and maintaining the status quo on energy policy so the fossil fuel industry can emit carbon pollution free of charge.