orrin hatch sen ut bak

3 22 bad format main

lcv score 7 of 100

omg invented his own sinecure pension plan CTT (tag in his dis-honor)

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/orrin-hatch-made-country-worse/

He may have been known as Borin’ Orrin, but his career and positions represented some of the worst tendencies in American history.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1934, Hatch grew up in a staunchly Mormon family, with elders going back generations. He went to Brigham Young University after working in the steel mills a bit. He was a smart, ambitious guy but not one with much money at this point.

He married young and already had a big family, fulfilling his Mormon heritage, so he finished at BYU, went back to the University of Pittsburgh for law school, and actually lived in a big chicken coop with his young family behind his parents’ house.

He was a history major at BYU and as a professional historian, I am ashamed of that fact. But he wouldn’t remain so for long. Once he graduated with his law degree, he got a job back out in Utah working for the oil and gas industry.

Goldwater-lite

Until he ran for the Senate in 1976, Hatch was not a politically important figure. He was just a lawyer. But he thought about it and talked to some Republicans in the state. They told him that anti-Washington sentiment was growing and, who knows, maybe he could take out the Democratic senator Frank Moss.

Hatch got the endorsement of the BYU president, Ernest Wilkinson, a man so rightwing that he refused to allow economics professors there to teach Keynesianism and who refused all federal funds so there would be no state control over his institution of higher indoctrination.

So that was a big endorsement in Utah.

He was a really terrible public speaker and it was a crowded primary. He didn’t have any money. He drove around campaigning in a big van with his six children in tow. But he did have that outsider rhetoric.

He made a recording where he borrowed heavily from Barry Goldwater’s anti-establishment language in 1964, calling his fellow Republicans sellouts and effectively being a precursor of Donald Trump’s ridiculous “drain the swamp” rhetoric in 2016.

He did this in part by endorsing Ronald Reagan for the 1976 election, tapping into the rising rightwing fury against civil rights and feminism among whites. Reagan was so happy, and Hatch’s team so busy bugging Reagan’s advisors for contacts, that Ronnie called up Hatch and endorsed him, which made all the difference in Utah. He won that primary.

Hatch continued this rhetoric in the general. Frank Moss was a pretty good senator. It’s worth remembering it’s not that long ago that the rural West could elect some really fine politicians. Moss fought the tobacco industry, nursing home exploitation and expanded the power of the Federal Trade Commission, all while opposing the Vietnam War.

Quite the senator for Utah!

Alas, those days are now long behind us. Hatch ran on his outsider credentials and laughably using term limits as his tool to do so. His theme: "What do you call a senator who's served in office for 18 years? You call him home.” Oh, the humor of Orrin Hatch. It worked. Sadly, Moss lost and Utah has not elected a decent statewide politician since.

Hatch the hatchet

His positions were typically revanchist culture war stuff. He promised an anti-pornography bill. He wanted to privatize Social Security. The vile Republican direct mail guru Richard Viguerie got behind Hatch and used his power to flood the Utah mail with propaganda in favor of the extremist.

When Hatch was elected, he was seen as kind of joke. As Rick Perlstein explores inReaganland, shortly after Hatch’s election, there was a dinner party among Long Island suburbanites that challenged guests to figure out what an “Orrin Hatch” was (sounds like the blandest possible mild New Mexico green chile to me), which led to some mildly amusing responses and the requisite Times article that effectively confirmed rural stereotypes about how urban people have contempt for them.

Hatch was just terrible. When Birch Bayh noted that anti-abortion activists only cared about life between conception and birth, Hatch actually said on the Senate floor that there was a “remarkable similarity between those who believe in abortion and those who are spending us into bankruptcy.”

What that similarity was, I have no idea, since it doesn’t make a lick of sense. But that word salad worked in Utah and among the growing powerful rightwing extremists making up the Republican Party, who thought Orrin might be interesting presidential material.

What made Hatch appealing to the New Right is that he was a hatchet man. They were sick of compromise. They wanted full-out aggression with no holds barred. That was Orrin Hatch.

Although still a first-term senator, when the AFL-CIO and Democrats pushed labor law reform in the early years of the Carter administration, it was the young Orrin Hatch chosen to be the pit bull against it. He called the business lobby when he arrived in Washington “a bunch of gutless wonders.” And he provided them the gut.

He was determined that workers would gain no rights in this nation. Worse, he succeeded in that goal, leading the way to gutting anything Democrats proposed on labor issues. What tool did he use?

Our old friend, the filibuster.

The filibuster’s history is mostly known for holding up bills that would move toward racial equality and there’s a good reason for that. But senators also used it, in the days before it became an everyday part of obstruction by the Republican Party, specifically against workers’ rights legislation.Hatch killed labor law reform. There were 59 votes for it. Such is the disaster of the world’s worst deliberative body.

Sorry, not sorry

Once he was elected, all that talk about term limits went away real fast. He was elected again and again, never seriously challenged by a Democrat. He defeated the mayor of Salt Lake City by 17 points in 1982 and then Frank Moss’ son Brian by 35 points in 1988.By this point, Utah was a full-on frothing rightwing cesspool. The state that once elected quite decent senators was now a place where Orrin Hatch could be seen as a relative moderate. He won reelection again in 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012 without any real competition.

Hatch was a hired hack of the vitamin supplement industry. This might seem like a strange issue to be tied to. But the supplement industry is huge in Utah and Hatch had a lot of relatives involved.

So he did everything in his considerable power to protect this industry from any regulation at all, including revealing what is in them. When Hatch left the Senate, Michael Hiltzik’s farewell in the LA Times reminded us of how “his deadliest law will live on.”

This was the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. Effectively, this eliminated government supervision of the supplement industry, allowing hucksters and scammers to put whatever they wanted in these things. Specifically, it stopped the Food and Drug Administration from reviewing these supplements ahead of time.

The FDA could later pull a product if it was found to be poisonous but that would come only after such poison was proven. This was a massive perversion of the entire point of the FDA and also the near-prototype for how Republicans see the world and how they want to take America back to the Gilded Age.

As Hiltzik noted, this had hugely negative consequences in the real world, such as when a supplement sold in Hawaii sent 47 people to the hospital with liver problems, resulting in three liver transplants and one death. Finally, it was pulled off the market. That’s entirely on Orrin Hatch.

Of course, Hatch’s son worked as a supplement industry lobbyist and two of the largest three campaign donors for Hatch in 2010 were Herbalife and Xango LLC, a supplement marketing firm. And when John McCain introduced a bill to mandate reports of illnesses from supplements, Hatch backed him down.

So everytime you hear someone getting seriously ill or dying from supplements, you can thank Orrin Hatch.

Not as clean as you’d think

Almost every position taken by Hatch was horrible. He was the author of the vile Hatch Amendment, his idea for aconstitutional amendmentreading, “A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution. The Congress and the several States shall have the concurrent power to restrict and prohibit abortions: Provided, That a law of a State which is more restrictive than a law of Congress shall govern.”

Hatch also was obsessed with a balanced budget, that hobgoblin of the little minds of our dumbest elites, and sponsored the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution on several occasions.

To his credit, Hatch did work closely with Ted Kennedy on a number of issues, the kind of bipartisanship that made Beltway reporters swoon.

That included working together on creating State Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. And you know what, sure, he deserves credit for that. Good for him. It’s not a perfect program but at least he did something positive with his life.

It got to the point that National Review even called him a liberal. That was ridiculous, but still. That also increasingly disappeared as he got older, to the sadness of writers such as Michael Tomasky, who lamented the decline of bipartisanship this represented.

Hatch was also not as clean personally as he liked to claim.

He got caught up in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal in the early 1990s, which was a case where the bank was laundering drug money and got caught and then was shut down in 1991 for paying huge bribes to governments in the global south to get deposits in the bank. It was a classic Beltway insider job, headed by former LBJ advisor Clark Clifford, among others.

Hatch was friends with a lot of these people and had attempted to use his influence to get a $10 million loan for another friend. Hatch went off on the Senate floor against the treatment of this bank in a speech written for him by the attorney of the bank implicated in all of this.

As part of the loan for his friend, campaign contributions to Hatch were laundered. Moreover, the organization bought 1,200 CDs of Orrin Hatch singing (my God, what horror is this?) and that was another payoff for him. There was a Senate Ethics Commission investigation of this but of course Hatch got away scot-free. Gross.

Hatch’s questionable finances meant he never got what he wanted more than anything: a Supreme Court appointment. As a co-founder of the Federalist Society, as well as co-chair, he set himself up for this well. Supposedly, he was in the running to replace Lewis Powell, which was Robert Bork’s infamous nomination, but there was no way Hatch could get by the Emoluments Clause and so didn’t get the call. And hey, remember when that mattered among Republicans!

Fathering judicial extremism

In any case, Hatch could routinely be the worst during Supreme Court nominations. He was outraged that Bork didn’t get confirmed. Moreover, he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas hearings, where he read from The Exorcist to “prove” that Anita Hill had stolen her (obviously false natch) sexual harassment allegations from that book.

In fact, few did more than Hatch to push the Republican Party toward extremism in the judiciary. He was a huge supporter of the nomination of Mr. Torture Memos himself, Jay Bybee, to the Ninth Circuit Court.

What is interesting, and a sign of how much politics have changed, is that Hatch, who was friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, personally lobbied Bill Clinton to choose her for the Supreme Court.

He was enough of an institutionalist to be wary of Republican decisions to nuke the filibuster on court nominees, but then was happy to go along with it and refused to support Merrick Garland in 2016.He had even once said that Garland would be a “consensus nominee” for the court. And then he stated that Garland did not deserve a nomination after Obama nominated him.

By this time, Hatch had pretty well determined not to run for another term. But that didn’t matter. He now fully believed in all of the Republican hard-right turn. After all, on most issues, he was quite responsible for that turn.

On gay rights, Hatch was as bad as one could possibly imagine, though he did moderate on this over time. In a 1977 speech at the University of Utah, Hatch stated, "I wouldn't want to see homosexuals teaching school anymore than I'd want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school.”

Of course, you could hear plenty of Democrats saying the same thing at the time. Hatch was a huge supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act. Later in his career, he did move enough on this issue to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have barred employers from being able to fire workers based upon their sexual orientation.

So I guess it serves to show that you work hard enough and maybe you can move the worst politicians to be slightly less bad, especially after you lay the groundwork for your party to become a cesspool of coup leaders and fascists. A lesson there, of sorts.

Right-winger too left for right-wingers

In 2000, Hatch decided to run for president. I am not sure who was clamoring for an Orrin Hatch presidency. As it turns out, the answer was no one. After a robust 1 percent showing in Iowa, placing him behind such brilliant leaders as Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer, Hatch dropped out and supported George W. Bush.

Naturally enough, the idea of Americans having a right to decent health care was an outrage to Hatch. Like a lot of Republicans, he was a total hypocrite on the issue.

Back in 1993, when Bill Clinton threatened universal health care, Hatch was one of the cosponsors of the individual insurance mandate in order to fight Democrats. So, in 2009, when Obama brought that fight back, in what led to the Affordable Care Act that integrated his own proposal sixteen years ago, Hatch now opposed it. Why, it’s almost as if Republican proposals are not made in good faith and Democrats shouldn’t copy them!

He had a lot of respect for people who held his own previous positions as well, saying in 2018 that supporters of Obamacare "the stupidest, dumbass people I've ever met.” I’m not sure Jesus and Joseph Smith approved of that language, Orrin. He may be in Hell now paying for such talk.

By the end, Utah had moved so far to the extremist right that people wondered whether Hatch was vulnerable to a primary challenge.

This is pretty crazy when you think about it. There was never anyone more committed to rightwing values than Orrin Hatch.

But he wasn’t a full-on fascist when the Republican Party began to demand that in every candidate. Mike Lee had defeated Bob Bennett in 2010 and Jason Chaffetz was talking about running against Hatch. He didn’t but eight other candidates did. He had to go to a run-off primary, which is the rule in Utah if a candidate doesn’t win 60 percent of the vote. Hatch won that easily, but it was the first time he had to do that and it was a sign that Utah was getting ever scarier.

Now, Orrin Hatch was always a good Mormon. So he claimed to have family values. Do you think those family values got in the way of him supporting Donald Trump? Ha ha, of course not.

Sure, after Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape came out, Hatch stated it was “disgusting” but it wasn’t enough for him to rescind his support in the fact of having to watch Hillary Clinton become president. Anything but that!

Instead, he used Trump like all Republicans did once they found out he shared their values, such as destroying the planet. Hatch was one of the senators to sign a letter urging Trump to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which he then did.

Hatch finally decided to not run for reelection in 2018. I doubt he would have lost a primary challenge that year, not after embracing Donald Trump so closely. He had only been in the Senate for a mere 42 years, which at the time was the longest serving Republican in Senate history, though Chuck Grassley later passed him.

For all his work in making the nation worse, Donald Trump presented Hatch with the Presidential Medal of Freedom that year.

Orrin Hatch is now dead. The nation is worse for his life. But hey, at least he had the respect of Donald Trump. What more could he want?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/12/pharma-lobby-poured-millions-into-darkmoney-groups/

pharmaceutical companies’ top lobbying group funneled millions of dollars to prominent “dark money” groups that pushed industry friendly messages to lawmakers and 2020 voters.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America raised nearly $527 million last year and spent roughly $506 million, new tax returns obtained by OpenSecrets reveal. That’s a record haul for the organization, which is funded by the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.

The trade association made its largest political donation of 2019 — $4.5 million — to the American Action Network, a dark money group that backs House Republicans. The conservative nonprofit and its pharmaceutical industry donor share disdain for proposals to regulate the price of prescription drugs.

The same year it received PhRMA’s donation, theAmerican Action Networklaunched several multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing President Donald Trump’s proposal to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. This year, the group launched multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing House Democrats’ bill to lower drug prices and ads boosting vulnerable Republicans who supported an alternative bill considered much friendlier to drugmakers.

The alliance between drugmakers and GOP groups isn’t new. PhRMA has given $14.6 million to the American Action Network since 2016. In that time, the American Action Network became a major contributor to GOP causes. During the 2020 election cycle, it gave $26.4 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republicans’ top super PAC that helped unseat several freshman Democrats.

In several key 2020 races, the American Action Network battled with a Democratic group that also received funding from drugmakers. PhRMA gave nearly $1.6 million to Center Forward, a dark money group aligned with moderate Blue Dog Democrats, last year. That nonprofit provided most of the funding for an allied super PAC that spent $3.3 million supporting House Democrats. The pharma-backed GOP and Democratic groups went head-to-head in several key House races, including a tightly contested New York race that has come down to a handful of votes.

Late last year, as Congress debated drug pricing bills, Center Forward flew House staffers to San Francisco to meet with drug company executives. The nonprofit’s board members have also lobbied for pharmaceutical interests. Republicans in Congress are the most vocal opponents of efforts to have the government regulate drug prices — a measure that would damage drugmakers’ profits — but Blue Dog Democrats also pushed back on more aggressive proposals to lower drug prices.

Drugmakers bankroll groups pushing industry talking points to Trump

Prominent drugmakers have spent much of 2020 developing vaccines to fight COVID-19, and the threat of drug pricing legislation in Congress has died down amid the pandemic. But Trump has continued to push forward with executive actions on prescription drugs opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

PhRMA deployed creative tactics in an attempt to persuade Trump against following through on his campaign promise to aggressively lower drug prices. During the Trump era, the trade association has bankrolled conservative groups that have access to the president.

The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, received $150,000 from PhRMA in 2019. Led by Trump ally and corporate lobbyist Matt Schlapp, the conservative nonprofit launched the Coalition Against Socialized Medicine late last year to oppose efforts to regulate drug prices and enact single-payer health care proposals.

Nearly all of the coalition’s members received funding from drugmakers within the last two years. Big pharma’s trade group gave $505,000 to American Commitment, $78,500 to Americans for a Balanced Budget and $60,000 to the Taxpayers Protection Alliancelast year alone, according to new tax returns. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance launched a six-figure ad campaign last month aimed at killing “surprise” medical billing legislation and calling it a “handout” to big insurance companies.

New tax returns also show that pharmaceutical manufacturers’ trade group gave $200,000 to the National Sheriffs Association, a nonprofit representing thousands of law enforcement officials. The group launched a six-figure ad campaign last year warning against Trump’s proposal to import drugs from foreign countries, a measure bitterly opposed by drugmakers. Those ads specifically targeted Trump, airing in Washington, D.C., on his favorite Fox News programs.

Trump ultimately approved a plan to import drugs from Canada in September, but its scope was limited. He also moved ahead with a rule that would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of drugs based on the price foreign governments pay, another measure strongly opposed by drugmakers.

Still, while Trump has moved ahead with industry-opposed measures, his GOP allies in Congress have not made drug pricing legislation a priority. Republican lawmakers and their aides are consistently fed opinion pieces and ad campaigns from conservative groups urging them to reject “socialist price controls.”

Republicans ran political ads in 2020 that mirrored talking points from major healthcare industry players. Super PACs aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attacked Democrats’ over their support for a public health insurance option, a proposal that could hurt drugmakers’ profits. Those ads cited a study from the Partnership For America’s Health Care Future, a conglomerate of insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that received $300,000 from PhRMA last year.

Longtime pharmaceutical ally gets seven-figure gift in retirement

One of PhRMA’s largest 2019 gifts was a $2 million donation to the Orrin Hatch Foundation, athink tank and research library launched by former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The trade group gave $140,000 to the foundation between 2017 and 2018.

Hatch, who retired in January 2019, was known as the pharmaceutical industry’s “man on the Hill” by the end of his 42-year tenure. Hatch helped shape current laws that regulate generic drugs and opposed measures to limit drugmakers’ monopoly protections. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch was considered the major roadblock to drug pricing changes proposed by Democrats and Trump.

the pharmaceuticals and health products industry gave $2.8 million to Hatch’s campaign committee since 1998, more than any member of Congress who didn’t run for president.When Hatch faced a primary challenge in 2012, PhRMAgave $750,000 to a super PAC boosting his reelection campaign.

During Hatch’s final years in office, his allies reportedly asked pharmaceutical companies and K Street lobbyists for donations to fund the Orrin Hatch Foundation. In 2018, the foundation invited major corporations, including pharmaceutical giant Merck, to a luxury mountain resort for a fundraiser.

While the foundation will serve as a library to catalogue Hatch’s government service and provide civic education, it has also put out policy reports on pressing issues. Its most recent report delves into how lawmakers can craft “sensible solutions to both foster innovative biologics and curb skyrocketing drug prices.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch

orrin Grant Hatch (born March 22, 1934) is an American attorney, retired politician, and composer who served as a United States senator from Utah for 42 years (1977–2019). He is the longest-serving Republican U.S. senator in history and the longest-serving U.S. Senator from Utah.

Hatch chaired the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions from 1981 to 1987. He also served as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995 to 2001 and 2003 to 2005. On January 3, 2015, after the 114th United States Congress was sworn in, Hatch became President pro tempore of the Senate. He served as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee from 2015 to 2019. Hatch led the efforts to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. He retired in January 2019 and was succeeded by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

Early life and education

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Political positions and votes

Abortion

Hatch was strongly opposed to abortion and was the author of the Hatch Amendment to the Constitution, which stated that there is no constitutional right to abortion and empowered the states to restrict abortion as they saw fit.

Anti-terrorism

As a senior member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Hatch was also instrumental in the 2008 extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He said, "This bipartisan bill will help defeat terrorism and keep America safe. No, the legislation is not perfect, but it ensures that the increased expansion of the judiciary into foreign intelligence gathering doesn't unnecessarily hamper our intelligence community."^[44]In 1995, Hatch was the leading figure behind the senate's anti-terrorism bill, to a large extent a response to the Oklahoma City Bombing. Elements of the bill were criticised by the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee on civil liberties grounds, especially the new limits imposed on habeas corpus in capital cases.^[43]

Bailouts

Hatch voted in favor of the 2008 legislation that established the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).^[45] In 2011, Hatch said that he "probably made a mistake voting for it", and also claimed "at the time, we were in real trouble and it looked like we were ready for a depression. I believe we would have gone into a depression."^[46] He voted against the renewal of TARP in 2009, and the renewal was voted down by 10 votes in the Senate.

Hatch voted in favor of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.^[47] The bill authorized $300 billion to guarantee mortgages and restore confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.^[48]

Balanced budget amendment

Main article: Balanced budget amendment

Hatch has been a longtime advocate of amending the United States Constitution to require that total spending of the federal government for any fiscal year not exceed total receipts.^[49][50]

During his time in the Senate, Hatch has sponsored a balanced budget amendment 17 times—4 times as lead sponsor and 13 times as a co-sponsor.^[49] He also voted in favor of passing a Balanced Budget Amendment on at least 9 occasions.^[51][52] Hatch's proposed amendment passed the House of Representatives in 1997, but failed to pass the Senate by the required two-thirds majority by one vote to move on the states for ratification.^[49][53]

Bank of Credit and Commerce International

Main article: Bank of Credit and Commerce International

In January 1990, the federal judge in a case against the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) accepted a 1989 plea bargain offered to the bank by the U.S. Department of Justice. The bank was to pay $15 million in fines and only admit that it had laundered drug money. Afterward, Hatch presented an impassioned defense of the bank in a speech on the Senate floor. It had been largely written for him by the bank's attorney Robert Altman. Hatch said, "The case arose from the conduct of a small number of B.C.C.I.'s more than 14,000 employees." Since 1989, Hatch and his aide, Michael Pillsbury, had been involved in efforts to counter the negative publicity that surrounded the bank. Hatch had also solicited the bank to approve a $10 million loan to a close friend, Monzer Hourani. In 1991, B.C.C.I. was shut down after regulators accused it of one of the biggest international financial frauds in history. Law enforcement officials accused the bank of making bribes throughout the third world to arrange government deposits. Clark Clifford, a former presidential advisor and Defense Secretary, and Altman, his law partner, were charged with taking bribes from B.C.C.I., in exchange for concealing its illegal ownership of First American Bankshares, a Washington holding company which Clifford chaired. Both had denied the charges, which were filed in New York State and Federal courts.^[54] In 1992, in a "Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate," prepared by committee members, U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Hank Brown (R-CO), noted that a key strategy of "BCCI's successful secret acquisitions of U.S. banks in the face of regulatory suspicion was its aggressive use of a series of prominent Americans," Clifford amongst them.^[55] The relationship with Hourani included the receipt of campaign contributions laundered through his employees, for which Hourani was fined $10,000, as well as his purchase of 1,200 CDs of Hatch's songs, for which Hatch received $3 to $7 each, and the management of a blind trust for Hatch. These led to a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, by which Hatch was eventually cleared.^[56]

Energy

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch has investigated the use of what are known as Section 1603 grants and tax credits. The Section 1603 program was created in President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus package with the intention of subsidizing green energy production. Since 2009, the federal government has given out $25 billion in cash grants on behalf of the program. Hatch has investigated the program on several occasions. On June 9, 2016, his office requested from Department of Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) details about how companies use the program. In March 2016, Hatch asked the IRS and Treasury Department to demonstrate that the agencies use safeguards and coordinate with each other when reviewing applications for Section 1603 grants. Per his June letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the agencies have cooperated with Hatch's investigation.^[57]

Health care reform

Hatch opposed President Barack Obama's health reform legislation; he voted against the Affordable Care Act in December 2009,^[58] and he voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.^[59] Hatch has argued that the insurance mandate found in the legislation is not in the category that can be covered by the interstate commerce clause since it regulates the decision to engage in commercial activity rather than regulating the activity itself. He therefore regards the Act as unconstitutional.^[60] NPR called Hatch a "flip-flopper" on this issue since in 1993 Hatch co-sponsored a bill along with 19 other Senate Republicans that included an individual insurance mandate as a means to combat healthcare legislation proposed by Hillary Clinton.^[61][62] In 2018, Hatch said that Obamacare supporters were "the stupidest, dumbass people I've ever met".^[63]

Hatch was one of the first Senators to suggest that the individual mandate was unconstitutional and promised to work on dismantling it when he becomes the Finance Committee Chairman.^[64] Hatch was part of the group of 13 Senators drafting the Senate version of the AHCA behind closed doors.^{[65][66][67][68]}

On March 25, 2014, Hatch cosponsored the Emergency Medical Services for Children Reauthorization Act of 2014 in the Senate. The bill that would amend the Public Health Service Act to reauthorize the Emergency Medical Services for Children Program through FY2019.^[72] The bill would authorize appropriations of about $20 million in 2015 and $101 million over the 2015–2019 period.^[73] Hatch argued that "children require specialized medical care, and that specialized care comes with unique challenges. The EMSC program helps ensure that some of our country's most vulnerable have access to the care they need, and I've been proud to support it all these years."^[74]In 2003, Hatch supported the Medicare prescription drug benefit plan known as Medicare Part D.^[69][70] Responding to criticism of the legislation during the 2009 debate on health care reform, Hatch said that in 2003 "it was standard practice not to pay for things" and that although there was concern at the time about increasing the deficit, supporting the bill was justified because it "has done a lot of good".^[71]

Immigration

Hatch was one of the architects and advocates of the expansion of H-1B visas and has generally been an advocate of tougher enforcement immigration policy including voting for 1,500 new law enforcement agents to patrol the border. His 2010 Immigration Bill titled Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America's Security Act has received the support of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).^[75] He also proposed the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, who were children when their parents came to the United States.^[76]

Hatch critiqued President Donald Trump's 2017 executive order to temporarily suspend immigration from seven Muslim countries until better screening methods are devised. He reflected on his own family's immigration history and described the order as placing "unnecessary burdens" on families.^[77]

Judicial nominations

CLARENECE

As ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch fought hard to get conservative judges nominated to the Supreme Court. He took a leading role in the Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas in October 1991. He was also a strong supporter of Jay Bybee during Bybee's confirmation hearings for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, stating "I've seen a lot of people around and a lot of judges and I don't know of anybody who has any greater qualifications or any greater ability in the law than you have."^[78][79]

Nevertheless, in 1993, Hatch recommended Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom he knew personally, to President Bill Clinton to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, even as he knew she was a political liberal. Clinton had not previously considered Ginsburg, and Hatch, as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, assured him that a Ginsburg confirmation would go smoothly

PRO FILIBUSTER

~ FAIR HOUSING

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Lobbying ties

Hatch's son Scott Hatch was formerly a partner and registered lobbyist at Walker, Martin & Hatch LLC, a Washington lobbying firm. The firm was formed in 2001 with Jack Martin, a staff aide to Hatch for six years, and H. Laird Walker, described as a close associate of the senator.^[136] In March 2003, the Los Angeles Times reported that the firm was formed with Hatch's personal encouragement and that he saw no conflict of interest in working on issues that involved his son's clients.^[137] In 2009, the Washington Times reported that Hatch said "My son, Scott, does not lobby me or anyone in my office".^[136]

In March 2009, the Washington Times reported that the pharmaceutical industry, which has benefited from Hatch's legislative efforts, had previously unreported connections to Hatch. In 2007, five pharmaceutical companies and the industry's main trade association, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), donated $172,500 to the Utah Families Foundation—a charitable foundation which Hatch helped start in the 1990s and has continued to support since. Walker, Martin & Hatch LLC was paid $120,000 by PhRMA in 2007 to lobby Congress on pending U.S. Food and Drug Administration legislation.^[136]

...

BUT

Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (Public Law 98-417), informally known as the Hatch-Waxman Act, is a 1984 United States federal law that encourages the manufacture of generic drugs by the pharmaceutical industry and established the modern system of government generic drug regulation in the United States. Representative Henry Waxman of California and Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah sponsored the act.

Personal life

Hatch married Elaine Hansen on August 28, 1957. They have six children.

Hatch is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Although he was born in Pennsylvania, his parents had been raised in Utah and he had ancestors who were members of the LDS Church in Nauvoo, Illinois. Hatch served as an LDS missionary in what was called the "Great Lakes States Mission" essentially covering large parts of Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. Hatch has since served in various positions in the LDS Church, including as a bishop.^[138][139]

Hatch is a founder and co-chair of the Federalist Society, an organization of conservative lawyers.^[140]

Hatch serves as a member of the board of directors of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.^{[141][better source needed]} In a 1996 interview on 60 Minutes, Hatch claimed to wear a mezuzah necklace in order to remind himself that another holocaust should never be allowed to occur.^[142]

Despite their political differences, Hatch was a longtime friend of fellow senator Ted Kennedy, speaking at his memorial service and publicly suggesting Kennedy's widow as a replacement for Kennedy in the Senate.^[

BAK

rino hunt by TP? //lugar? got thru ok, pal of ted K http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/orrin-hatch_n_1694381.html?ref=topbar

see bak

ron arnold LI

Click here to view J.J. Brown’s profile

J.J. Brown

“Senator Orrin Hatch was behind two laws that strengthened the hand of law enforcement to 1) track ecoterrorists and 2) put them in jail. As an aide advising the senator on the issue, I can say that Ron Arnold's work directly inspired and informed the policy formulation behind those laws. It's no stretch to say that due to Ron's work, ecoterrorists are in jail today who would otherwise be free. No American has done more to expose the radical side of the "green" movement for the conspiracy it is. Ron's regular opinion columns continue to shed light on the forces that would take away our freedoms.”

quincy klugman 2 tv show got hatch to cave on blocking orphan drug, RR signed bill npr widow of woody guthrie (incentive to dev rx)

colluded on brett k?

There’s some evidence in the public domain backing up Schmidt’s speculation. On Tuesday, we learned that Kavanaugh had met privately with Hatch, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, and told him the accusations could be a case of mistaken identity. Whelan amplified this defense on his Twitter feed. On Wednesday, Hatch’s spokesperson, Matt Whitlock, retweeted another Whelan tweet promoting a mistaken identity theory, telling people to “keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days.” (After Whelan’s thread came out, Whitlock deleted the tweet and denied having any foreknowledge of what Whelan was planning.)

Then on Thursday evening, the Washington Post reported that the “mistaken identity” argument was a central plank of the planned Kavanaugh defense against the Ford allegations. It’s not clear in the story whether the plan was to simply say it was someone else, or to point the finger at a specific person as Whelan did:

Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions....vox

spooked right by flank scare?

heilemann noted that Sen. Orrin Hatch, the most senior Republican in his chamber, was recently indulging Trump by suggesting that the guilty plea of former national security adviser Michael Flynn might be illegitimate.

"The president thinks he's winning with this argument," Heilemann continued. "We may have gotten through this day and nothing cataclysmic may have happened — although it's still an ugly precedent and some ugly things happened with Emmet Flood showing up at that meeting, I think —but we are headed towards a bigger confrontation."

https://www.alternet.org/economy/3-noxious-myths-about-poor-republicans-are-using-slash-social-safety-net

Republicans continue to use long-debunked myths about the poor as they defend lower taxes for the richand deep cuts to the social safety netto pay for them. In so doing, they are essentially expressing scorn for working class and low-income Americans.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, recently justified reducing the number of wealthy families exposed to the estate tax as a way to recognize “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Similarly, Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.

These statements, the likes of which I expect we’ll all hear more of in coming months, reinforce three harmful narratives about low-income Americans: People who receive benefits don’t work, they don’t deserve help and the money spent on the social safety net is a waste of money.

Based on my research and 20 years of experience as a clinical law professor representing low-income clients, I know that these statements are false and only serve to reinforce misconceptions about working class and poor Americans.

Food participants get an average of $125 a month, hardly enough to feed a family without earning money as well.

Most welfare recipients are makers not takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are “takers” rather than “makers,” is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal – hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, “We have a welfare system that’s trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.”

Not true. Welfare – officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families – has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

In addition to wage stagnation, most Americans are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, which is increasingly unaffordable. There are 11 million renter households paying more than half their income on housing. And there is no county in America where a minimum wage worker can afford a two-bedroom home. Still, only 1 in 4 eligible households receive any form of government housing assistance.

To be sure, there are recipients of public benefits who do not work. They are primarily children, the disabled and the elderly – in other words, people who cannot or should not work. These groups constitute the majority of public benefits recipients.

Society should support these people out of basic decency, but there are self-interested reasons as well. To begin with, all working adults have been children, will someday be old and, at any time, might face calamities that take them out of the workforce. The safety net exists to rescue people during these vulnerable periods. Indeed, most people who receive public benefits leave the programs within three years.

Moreover, many public benefits pay for themselves over time, as healthier and financially secure people are more productive and contribute to the overall economy. For example, every dollar in SNAP spending is estimated to generate more than $1.70 in economic activity.

Similarly, Medicaid benefits are associated with enhancing work opportunities. The earned income tax credit contributes to work rates, improves the health of recipient families and has long-term educational and earnings benefits for children.

The current federal minimum wage is hardly enough to feed a family. AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato

What the needy deserve

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/clarence-thomas-must-resign-sexual-harassment

~ anita hill

~ bears ears

http://www.ecowatch.com/national-monuments-oil-drilling-2401250520.html

jason smith missouri

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr1155

The Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome (SCRUB) Act (H.R. 1155 / S. 1683) would would establish a new “regulatory review” commission funded at taxpayer expense, charged with the identifying duplicative, redundant or so-called “obsolete” regulations to repeal. It would do nothing to identify the numerous gaps, shortfalls and outdated regulatory standards that leave the public vulnerable to the next public health tragedy.

This commission would only consider the costs to affected industries while ignoring the benefits of oversight. The commission’s goal to achieve a 15 percent reduction in the cumulative cost of regulations would result in the repeal of critical health, safety and environmental safeguards — even when the benefits of these rules are significant, appreciated by the public and far outweigh the costs.

In addition, the bill would create a “cut-go” system that requires any agency issuing a new regulation to remove an existing regulation of equal or greater cost. If the science finds that a substance widely used in commerce is harmful to infants, regulators would have to find some other protection to cut before protecting young children. The bill would make it impossible for agencies to bypass “cut-go” procedures, no matter how urgent the circumstances might be.

At the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC)'s 2016 meeting in Denver, Colorado this week, a representative from a prominent oil and gas lobbying group advocated that auctions of federal lands should happen online “eBay”-style — a clear attempt to shut the public out of the bidding process for fossil fuel leases on public lands.

Speaking on public lands issues in front of IOGCC's public lands committee, Kathleen Sgamma — Western Energy Alliance's (WEA) vice president of governmental affairs — compared environmental groups' Keep It In The Ground campaign actions at U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) bids to a “circus.” Sgamma said WEA was in contact with both BLM and Congressional members to push the auctions out of the public sphere and onto the internet.

DeSmog, which attended the IOGCC meeting, recorded the presentation and has published it online.

Sgamma opened her statement on the Keep It In The Ground “circus” by pointing to the fact that BLM has already compared the activism, in testimony delivered to Congress (beginning at 54:30) on March 23, 2016, with the right-wing militia that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge's public lands plot in Oregon.

Sgamma also revealed that WEA has a counter campaign that it will launch soon to oppose Keep It In The Ground.

Here is a partial transcript of Sgamma's statement (beginning at about 19:55 in the audio):

So Western Energy Alliance is planning some counter-efforts with Keep It In The Ground which we'll be announcing probably later this month. We've also been working with BLM and Congress to say 'Let's just get rid of this circus, let's just have online auctions. eBay is out there, it can be done.' So BLM has also expressed concern for its employees as well. In fact, BLM Director [Neil] Kornze, in a hearing a couple months ago, was asked about all of these protests and even equated these protests with the militia who shut down and occupied the Malheur Wildlife Reserve in Oregon. So BLM is likewise concerned about the safety of its employees and it put in place security measures at last week's auction. But, what we're saying and what a lot of people are saying is, 'Let's just get rid of the circus. Let's do online auctions.' So hopefully BLM is compelled even more after Thursday to move in that direction.

The “Thursday” Sgamma referred to was an action that took place near Denver at a May 12 BLM auction occurring under the fold of “Break Free,” a rolling wave of anti-fossil fuel actions conducted worldwide between May 3 and May 15, 2016. It was after that meeting that Sgamma began calling the Keep It In The Ground campaign a “circus,” referring to it as such in a quote given to The Denver Post, and calling for its “end” by implementing online auctions.

WEA's over 400 oil and gas industry members include many of the same companies that funded IOGCC's meeting: XTO Energy (an ExxonMobil subsidiary), ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, Noble Energy, Marathon Oil, Anadarko and others. It was at a WEA meeting in 2014 that Rick Berman stated in a speech that the oil and gas industry is waging an “endless war” against environmental advocates, and that it has to “play dirty to win.”

IOGCC's members include appointees of governors of the U.S. oil and gas producing states, which generally means heads of state oil and gas regulatory agencies as official state representatives, and at-large members that include oil and gas industry lobbyists and executives. Of the 180 people who attended the IOGCC meeting, 63 were oil and gas industry employees.

Keep It In The Ground is a campaign whose basis is that fossil fuels on public lands must be left in the ground due to the science-based climate change costs inherent in not doing so. IOGCC, which claims concern about “protecting health, safety and the environment” in its mission statement, has gone on the record to say it has no stance on climate change.

Concerted Push

It appears the WEA push for online lease sales began in February, when it wrote and published a letter to BLM to make its pitch.

“Might we suggest as an alternative that BLM take advantage of online auctions,” wrote Sgamma in the February 11 letter. “If protesters continue to disrupt lease sales, we strongly suggest BLM simply hold online auctions within the same quarter as the original sales. Online auctions also have added cost-savings benefits as venues and security personnel do not have to be enlisted to handle potentially unruly crowds.”

BLM has stated on the record that, responding to the WEA push, it is now considering online auctions moving forward.

“There's been research done that shows the overall participation and bid amounts are enhanced through the internet process,” Kent Hoffman, deputy state director of BLM's Utah office, told Deseret News on May 6. “We've been desiring to move into the electronic world for years…It is more efficient for us and probably for industry, too, to participate in an online auction.”

BLM's Washington, DC headquarters will have the final say over whether online auctions are the future of bidding for oil, gas and coal leases on U.S. public lands.

Congress Hatch-ing Online Auctions

Meanwhile, Congress has started moving on the WEA-proposed online auctions of public lands, led by U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch inserted an amendment into the proposed congressional comprehensive energy bill calling for the BLM to study the possibility of online bids “so that the mere threat of protest does not derail oil and gas lease auctions that are critical to Utah’s economy.”

The amendment, Section 3108 of the legislation, passed in the Senate as part of the broader bill on April 20 and awaits a House vote.

big out of state money from? to?

Orrin G. Hatch (R -Utah) $5,360,274 88.5%

---2012

when six-term GOP incumbent Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah faced the prospect of a mutiny from conservative activists, his allies within the pharmaceutical industry stepped in to help defend him.

New documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that the drug lobby’s main trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), gave $750,000 in 2011 to Freedom Path, a nonprofit group that spent big to help Hatch win another term.

Despite his solid conservative credentials, Hatch drew a primary challenge from former state Sen. Dan Liljenquist in the 2012 election. Hatch out-fundraised the challenger by an 11-1 margin, but Liljenquist was helped by super PAC FreedomWorks for America, which reported spending nearly $1 million on anti-Hatch ads.

Filings with the Federal Election Commission indicate that Freedom Path spent at least $517,000 on ads designed to help Hatch’s electoral prospects, though Freedom Path board member Scott Bensing said the group’s spending was closer to $1 million.

The drug lobby’s donation was revealed on PhRMA’s newly filed Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service, which covers the 2011 calendar year. Since the donation went to a nonprofit, it was not required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission.

PhRMA made contributions to several other politically linked nonprofits, including:

$500,000 to “Montana Growth,” which appears to be a group that produced fliers and radio ads supporting a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court;

$264,500 to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial organization made up of state lawmakers and corporate executives that creates “model legislation” for state legislatures;

$250,000 to the liberal-aligned Citizens for Strength and Security;

$200,000 to anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform;

$40,000 to conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation; and

$40,000 to the Utah Families Foundation, which Hatch helped start in the 1990s and still raises money for.

(Update: Nov. 30, 2012, 5:45 p.m.: Additional research has shown that "Montana Growth" was not the "Montana Growth Network," which was active in the state's Supreme Court race, but rather a Democratic-aligned nonprofit. See this article for more.)

Freedom Path is a “front group set up to protect Orrin Hatch,” said Russ Walker, FreedomWorks’ vice president of political and grassroots campaigns.

“Orrin Hatch has always worked hard for the drug lobby,” Walker said. “He has always been an advocate for their positions.”

A spokesperson for Hatch did not respond to requests for comment.

But Dave Hansen, Hatch's campaign manager, said by law the campaign couldn't coordinate with Freedom Path.

"We had no contact with them," he said. "And did not know what they were doing, when they did it or where they got their funds from."

According to Bensing, Freedom Path seeks a “more accountable federal budget, a balanced budget amendment and less intrusive government.”

He said his organization has received money from about “eight to 10” contributors, totaling roughly $1.5 million since its launch last year. He declined to identify any of these backers. The group reported raising $850,000 in 2011 from two donors, according to an IRS document obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Earlier this year, Liljenquist complained to The Salt Lake Tribune about the lack of information about Freedom Path.

“Organizations have just as much right as people to participate in politics, but there should be visibility on who is funding them and where that money is coming from," he said.

Federal rules only require Freedom Path, which is a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit, to disclose its donors if a contribution is earmarked for a specific advertisement. Freedom Path officials says the group has not solicited money for particular ads.

Like Freedom Path, FreedomWorks operates a nonprofit wing that does not reveal its donors. The non-disclosing nonprofit also accounted for about 15 percent of the $15 million raised by its super PAC arm.

Friend of PhRMA

Hatch received more campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry than any other member of Congress in the 2011-2012 election cycle, some $448,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The 78-year-old lawmaker sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and is the ranking GOP member on the powerful Senate Finance Committee.

As far back as 1984, he authored legislation with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., that helped allow generic drugs to flourish but also gave brand-name pharmaceutical companies new powers to contest patent infringements by generics.

And he helped spearhead a successful effort to give pharmaceutical companies 12 years of exclusive rights to sell biologic drugs rather than the seven-year period favored by President Barack Obama during the health care reform debate.

Furthermore, his son, Scott Hatch, is a partner at a lobbying firm whose clients include PhRMA and drug-maker GlaxoSmithKline, though both Hatches have maintained that Scott does not lobby his father or his office.

PhRMA declined to respond to direct questions from the Center. Senior vice president Matthew Bennett said in a written statement that the group “often makes grants or charitable contributions to organizations that share PhRMA’s goals.”

PhRMA spent more than $14 million on lobbying in the first three quarters of this year and donated $185,500 to politicians via its PAC during the 2012 election cycle, including $6,000 to Hatch, federal records show.

In July, it also gave $50,000 to a joint fundraising committee that benefited three Democratic super PACs: Majority PAC, House Majority PAC and Priorities USA Action, which supported Obama’s re-election.

The new IRS filing further shows that PhRMA contributed $5,000 to the American Action Network, a conservative nonprofit headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman. That’s down significantly from the $4.5 million PhRMA donated to the group in 2010.

PhRMA officials declined to comment about whether the organization gave additional money to American Action Network in 2012.

Long-time ALEC member

PhRMA has provided financial support to the Republican-dominated American Legislative Exchange Council for years. Jeffrey Bond, a senior vice president at PhRMA, sits on ALEC’s “private enterprise board.”

The organization opposes policies that would allow U.S. consumers to buy prescription drugs from countries such as Canada at bargain prices and bring them back to the United States. It has also pushed model legislation aimed at countering proposals that advocate for government-mandated price controls on pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, in a seeming departure, the trade group appears to have given a large contribution to an organization active in Montana’s Supreme Court election.

Montana Growth, whose address is listed as a mailbox at a UPS store in Washington, D.C., on the IRS form, appears to be the “Montana Growth Network,” which sought to influence the state’s nonpartisan judicial race. State District Judge Laurie McKinnon defeated Missoula public defender Ed Sheehy for an open seat on the high court, after attorney Elizabeth Best was knocked out during a contentious primary.

McKinnon was endorsed by the Montana Chamber of Commerce and Montana Farm Bureau, while the Montana Growth Network attacked Sheehy for a case in which he argued that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

The $500,000 donation was far more than the candidates raised in a state where contribution limits are among the lowest in the nation.

McKinnon, who won with about 56 percent of the vote, raised about $87,000 while Sheehy raised roughly $67,000, according to the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Group’s origins questioned

In 2010, Hatch’s Republican colleague, Sen. Bob Bennett, was targeted by tea party-aligned activists and thwarted from winning a fourth term in the U.S. Senate. Hatch wanted to avoid a similar fate.

Bennett’s re-election was opposed by the anti-tax group Club for Growth as well as FreedomWorks, which is headed by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Freedom Path’s first ad was released in July of 2011. It touted Hatch and tea party-backed freshman Sen. Mike Lee, who bested Bennett in 2010, as “leading the fight in Washington to get spending under control,” though Lee had declined to endorse Hatch before the June primary.

Another ad in January championed Hatch as “leading the conservative charge to repeal Obamacare.” And one ad in March trumpeted the balanced budget amendment introduced by Hatch and Lee.

The group also produced several advertisements attacking Liljenquist.

Ultimately, Hatch prevailed, capturing about two-thirds of the vote.

During the contested primary election, all that was known about Freedom Path was its leadership, which has ties to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and former Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.

In addition to Bensing, the group’s board members include GOP operative Mark Emerson.

Bensing is a lobbyist at the firm SB Strategic Consulting, whose clients include the Nevada Department of Transportation, Station Casinos in Las Vegas and Zuffa LLC, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

He previously worked as Ensign’s chief of staff and as the executive director of the NRSC.

Emerson, meanwhile, previously worked for Hatch and served as Ensign’s chief of staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. He once was the executive director of the Utah Republican Party.

During the campaign, Freedom Path also hired the consulting firm November Inc., which is headed by Mike Slanker, a former NRSC operative and Ensign aide.

Sheila Krumholz, the executive director the Center for Responsive Politics, said PhRMA’s $750,000 contribution to Freedom Path allowed the drug lobby to claim some credit for Hatch's victory, “without being directly linked to the outside group's expenditure if he'd lost.”

Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California-Irvine law school, added that voters should have been informed of the donation because it would have helped them judge the “credibility of the ads.”

“Groups adopt anodyne names like ‘Freedom Path’ which reveal nothing to voters about who is really behind [their] political advertising,” he said. “Voters may have liked or not liked that Sen. Hatch's election was being supported by the pharmaceutical industry, but they should have known about it.”