Unsupported Democratic allegations against Chamber

With structural factors pointing toward significant Republican gains in November, the White House and the Democratic Party are suggesting that the US Chamber of Commerce is funding its ads with foreign money despite a lack of hard evidence to support the charge. President Obama has called the ads "a threat to our democracy" and the DNC released an online ad saying "It appears they’ve even taken secret foreign money to influence our elections" (while showing images of Chinese currency).

On Saturday, the New York Times published a story saying "there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents." Think Progress, the original source of the charge, claimed that the Times had not refuted its claim, arguing that other funds from international corporations may support the Chamber's ads. However, no proof was provided for the original allegation. As Think Progress acknowledged, "the essential fact is that there are no disclosure requirements that provide oversight to know whether or not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is obeying the law." (See also this response.)

While more disclosure may be desirable, it doesn't justify the "When did you stop beating your wife?" nature of these allegations, as in this quote from Obama adviser David Axelrod yesterday:

David Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, was asked Sunday by Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on CBS if he had any evidence that the chamber was using secret foreign funds to influence the election.

“Well, do you have any evidence that it’s not, Bob?” Mr. Axelrod replied. “The fact is that the chamber has asserted that, but they won’t release any information about where their campaign money is coming from. And that’s at the core of the problem here.”

The Democratic committee’s spokesman, Hari Sevugan, likewise offered no evidence and suggested it was up to the chamber to disprove the assertions. “Serious questions have been raised,” he said in an e-mail. “If they want to clear this up, they can open up their books.”

Democrats might want to think back to the 1996-2000 period when Republicans repeatedly demagogued the issue of foreign campaign contributions and demanded that the Clinton White House prove its innocence against a litany of allegations. More importantly, with a Republican House seeming likely, the Obama administration might want to consider whether it wants to set up a standard where every charge made by the other party must be disproven.

Comments

[David in Cal]

Glad to see Brendan willing to criticize Dems. However, regret that he feels compelled to follow the NY Times tacit editorial rule that an item criticizing Dems must include comparable criticism of Reps.

In this case, note how weak the comparison is. The unsupported accusation of illegal foreign campaign contributions is being made overtly by the White House. OTOH, it was only unnamed Reps who made similar criticisms of Clinton. Also, those occurred a long time ago.

As far as I can recall, the Bush White House never made this sort of unsupported smear. Instead of blasting unnamed Republicans of long ago, I think Brendan ought to have contrasted President Bush's gentlemanly behavior with President Obama's not-so-nice behavior.

[Fargus]

Brendan, I think that your post is pretty much on the money, but the thing you forget is that in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, without disclosure rules, the pumping of foreign money into the Chamber's coffers would be vastly, vastly easier than it would have been 15 years ago. Of course people shouldn't go making unsubstantiated claims, but there is a real concern here.

[JP]

@Fargus.

The USCC is a non-profit lobbyist organization. They are involved in lobbying legislators, they also have a PAC that attempts to influence elections in various ways. The Citizens United case ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations, non-profits, and unions withing a certain time frame before an election. There was no ruling changing the laws for unions et al taking money from foreigners.

I get so sick of Citizens United being lambasted as the source of all evil">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22fri1.html?scp=6&sq=citizens%20united&st=Search">evil and corruption in campaign spending. Read the case and understand what it means. I will help you out. click here">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?_r=1">here and here

[Fargus]

I'm not, and never have been, saying that Citizens United is the source of all evil. What I am saying is that it changed the landscape as far as fundraising goes. That much is incontrovertible.

[MartyB]

Brendan - Kudos for taking on the O admin and Dems on this issue. As always, politicians turn out to be politicians regardless of the image they create (or allow to be created) for themselves.

[JP]

@Fargus.

"in the wake of the Citizens United ruling, without disclosure rules, the pumping of foreign money into the Chamber's coffers would be vastly, vastly easier than it would have been 15 years ago"

The reality is foreign money income for lobbyist organizations was in fact /not/ part of the Citizens United ruling. Citizens United overruled parts of the McCain-Feingold Act (2002) and a few previous rulings of the Supreme Court. None of the rulings had anything to do with foreign money income for lobbyist organizations.

You /could/ make the argument that a lobbyist organization does not have to disclose their income in the ways that a PAC does. You /could/ then make the claim that foreign money is more easily making its way into direct electioneering advertisements.

I would argue that was happening already before the "dreaded" Citizens United ruling. Take for example the effects of 527 groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. McCain-Feingold did little to stop these unlimited millions from trying to influence the election.

[Boffin]

I'm genuinely confused. I don't agree with President Obama on much.

The case is indisputable: The Chamber takes foreign money and it advocates. Money is fungible. Money talks. Therefore foreign interests are funding political advocacy in the US.

Would you feel differently if Burma or North Korea were funding PACs?

[Jim B]

Well gosh, Boffin, with logic like that then I'm assuming that you're ready to condemn the SEIU, AFL-CIO and many other groups which contribute almost exclusively to Democrats which get a much larger portion of THEIR revenues from overseas affiliates are "funding political advocacy in the US."

Oh, you're not? Yeah...thanks for the concern trolling, but you've been busted. Thanks for playing.

[DarkHelmet]

This glosses over the fact that the Clinton campaign actually did rake in cash from overseas -- Maria Hsia ring a bell? The Riadys and Lippo Group? Charlie Trie? John Huang? Ted Sioeng? The DNC had to give back millions of illegal donations. Of course, they didn't have to give back the votes.

It also glosses over the Obama campaign's decision to disable software to detect overseas contributions made by credit card in the 2008 election. Maybe I'll get on board with Axelrod and demand that the Chamber of Commerce prove their innocence . . . right after the same treatment is applied to Axelrod, Obama and their slick little operation.

[DarkHelmet]

Forgot to mention Al Gore and those amazingly wealthy and generous Buddhist nuns.

[memomachine]

Hmmm.

@ Boffin

"The case is indisputable: The Chamber takes foreign money and it advocates. Money is fungible. Money talks. Therefore foreign interests are funding political advocacy in the US."

It's amazing. It's almost like there is a market for computer software to keep track of money, where it comes from and where it gets spent. Let's call it "accounting software" ...

[George B]

Quantities matter. The dollar amount of dues from foreign corporations is an insignificant part of the total budget of the US Chamber of Commerce. In my opinion the goals of this attack are 1) attempt to make an issue to fire up the left base and 2) put pressure on US corporations not to donate to the US Chamber of Commerce PAC by disclosing donations. How about letting individual union members opt out of contributing to political activity in exchange for rules to sequester member dues in separate accounts from PAC funds in an organization?

[Ron]

Seems like most of us on the right are missing the point. Wether or not the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money, they are accepting unlimited funds from corporations. While I fully support conservative principles, I do not accept the GOP leaderships stance on corporate influence in our government.

Our founding fathers knew the dangers of corporations, most states considered donations to political campaigns by companies a criminal offense. If we do not purge our party of it's partnership with the CoC and work to remove the special interest from our politics we will continue to lose support from conservatives like myself.