4/9/13, "Lobbyists Fighting Spending Cuts Find Ally in Group That Often Backs Them," NY Times, by Nicholas Confessore
"As one of the country’s largest and oldest conservative advocacy groups, the American Conservative Union has long fought to rein in federal spending and limit the size of government.
But behind the scenes, the group has formed a partnership with business
lobbyists to tame the activists who have pushed Republican leaders in
Congress to adopt some of the most austere spending limits in decades.
In a draft proposal
circulated to defense and transportation industry executives in recent
weeks, the union is offering to use its grass-roots organization, annual
conference and movement clout to lobby against cuts to federal military
and infrastructure spending.
The group is also proposing to incorporate favorable votes on military
and infrastructure spending into its widely cited Congressional voting
scorecard, “the ‘gold standard’ for elected officials,” according to the
proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. The
documents shed light on a rarely public corner of Washington lobbying,
where industry lobbyists join with grass-roots groups that offer
ideological credibility and deep mailing lists of sympathetic activists —
sometimes for a price.
“Constitutional conservatives recognize that not all government
expenditures are equal,” the proposal says. “These investments are core,
constitutional federal responsibilities and should be so treated in the
allocation of federal resources.”
The proposed new effort, called the American Strength Program, would be
financed by contributions from the defense and transportation
businesses, which have struggled to defend the federal appropriations
that benefit them as Congressional Republicans seek further spending
cuts.
In recent weeks, the American Road and Transportation Builders
Association has urged transportation lobbyists and business executives
to make contributions to the American Strength Program. The association,
which sometimes works with Democratic-leaning labor unions to advance
federal road and bridge projects, suggested it was critical to persuade
conservative lawmakers to bend on some areas of spending.
“As you know, in recent times, we have often had trouble convincing our
conservative friends that transportation infrastructure is a valuable
investment and should not be subject to the spending cuts being
discussed,” wrote Richard Juliano, the association’s senior vice
president for strategic initiatives, in an e-mail to colleagues this
month. “We would appreciate your considering a major contribution to
this program in support of the A.C.U. effort and encouraging others to
do so.”
Officials at the union, who declined to say how much they were seeking
to raise for the new program, described the proposal as a draft. The
group’s tax returns indicate it raised about $3.8 million in 2010, but
as a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization, the union is not required
to disclose its donors.
In an interview, Alberto R. Cardenas, the chairman of the conservative
union, said all money raised from the program’s partners would go into a
Beltway-focused media campaign.
“My thought was that we were taking an uneven amount of resources from
the two elements that are the most basic responsibilities of the federal
government, which are national defense and the development of a
national transportation infrastructure,” Mr. Cardenas said.
The American Strength Program also hints at some fundamental tensions
within conservatism. The movement’s establishment, including the
conservative union, took root in Washington in an when era military
spending was sacrosanct and transportation bills regularly marched
through Congress with bipartisan support.
But the movement’s vanguard today is a new generation of Tea Party-inspired
lawmakers and activists, many of whom arrived in Washington denouncing
the infrastructure spending in President Obama’s stimulus program. They
are more comfortable with cuts to the Pentagon budget and actively
hostile to the earmark spending through which so many road and bridge
projects have been financed in the past.
John F. Tate, president of Campaign for Liberty, a grass-roots
organization that grew out of the 2008 presidential campaign of
Representative Ron Paul of Texas, said the American Strength Program
“smacks to a lot of people as taking big money to do the bidding of big
business.”
“We’re of the opinion that at this time, with the nation going bankrupt,
everything has to be looked at for cuts,” Mr. Tate added.
The American Conservative Union has long opposed cuts to the military
budget while attacking what it deems wasteful government spending. Its
popular annual conference, the Conservative Political Action Conference,
draws thousands of grass-roots activists and conservative stars, like
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Mr. Cardenas said the group lobbied to pass last year’s transportation
bill after Representative John L. Mica, a Florida Republican who led the
House Transportation Committee, persuaded him that the legislation made
important reforms to road and bridge programs.
When the bill stalled in Congress — in part because of objections by
conservative Republicans over its cost — Mr. Cardenas wrote an opinion
article in The Washington Examiner urging conservatives to help break
the logjam. The bill, Mr. Cardenas wrote, streamlined the environmental
review process for new projects and contained no earmarks.
But while the American Strength proposal portrays military and
transportation spending as consistent with principled conservatism, some
conservative leaders disagreed, saying it would put the interests of
particular businesses ahead of the interest of the taxpayers.
“From a policy point of view, we would challenge that argument,” said
Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a conservative organization
that has aligned itself with the Tea Party movement. “We would argue
that from a balanced-budget point of view, you need to put everything on
the table, including military spending. And certainly the
transportation bill is full of earmarks and wasteful spending.”
The new proposal also echoes an earlier effort
that dragged the conservative union into controversy. In 2009,
officials at the group sought more than $2 million from FedEx in
exchange for helping the shipping company oppose a bill that would have
permitted FedEx drivers to unionize.
When FedEx declined the offer — which included a promise to mobilize
conservative union members with direct mail and phone calls — the
chairman of the group then, David A. Keene, signed onto an open letter
criticizing FedEx. The flip-flop drew sharp criticism from some other
conservatives, who accused the conservative union of offering for sale
its allegiance and imprimatur.
Mr. Keene left the group in 2011 and is now president of the National
Rifle Association. He was replaced by Mr. Cardenas, a former chairman of
the Florida Republican Party who also runs a Washington lobbying firm,
Cardenas Partners.
Mr. Cardenas’s position at the conservative union is unpaid. But several
of his firm’s clients have lobbied on infrastructure or
military-related matters in the past two years. Other members of the
conservative union’s board also work at lobbying or public affairs
firms, representing clients like Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and
other military contractors.
The group’s most recent scorecard,
covering lawmakers’ voting records in 2012, says it tracks a wide range
of issues with the mission of “informing grass-roots conservatives and
the public — in an unbiased, transparent manner — on where individual
members of Congress fall on the ideological spectrum.”" via Mark Levin twitter
===================================
====================================
2/9/12, "The American Conservative Union: now neutralizing the conservative movement," by James Lampe, "Corruption at the ACU" (American Conservative Union)
In addition, Mr. Cardenas is a Senior Partner at Tew Cardenas, a law firm that does lobbying for business and government entities, under the brand name The Advocacy Group."...
(Also posted at RedState.com, 2/11/12, "The American Conservative Union: neutralizing the conservative movement," Jim Lampe, RedState.com)
=====================
Feb. 2011, CPAC not happy with Tea Party-Rush Limbaugh
2/14/11, "Rush: 'Tea party was under assault at CPAC'," World Net Daily, Drew Zahn
"“But at CPAC, you didn’t get the impression here that there was a conservative ascendancy going on.
You had a lot of people saying, ‘We gotta do something about that faction,’” Limbaugh said on his program today. “The tea party was under assault in its own way at CPAC. And you in the tea party understand full well
the ruling class is not happy with you.
And it was clearly obvious.”"...
====================
2/7/12, "CPAC for Sissies: Self-Censoring for Sharia," Pamela Geller, American Thinker
.
No comments:
Post a Comment