No Climate Tax pledge

<h2>=</h2><div>bad format see bak 5 22</div><div>note color? below</div><div>see climate zombies</div><div>Leverage?  copy of norquist</div><div>=</div><div>When President Obama unveiled his program to tackle climate change last month, he deliberately sidestepped Congress as a hopeless bastion of obstruction, relying completely on changes that could be imposed by regulatory agencies. A <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_millions_spread_influence_through_nonprofits/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">two-year study by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University</a>, released today, illustrates what might be one of the reasons why he had to take this circuitous route. Fossil fuel magnates Charles and David Koch have, through Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group they back, succeeded in persuading many members of Congress to sign a little-known <a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">pledge</a> in which they have promised to vote against legislation relating to climate change unless it is accompanied by an equivalent amount of tax cuts. Since most solutions to the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions require costs to the polluters and the public, the pledge essentially commits those who sign to it to vote against nearly any meaningful bill regarding global warning, and acts as yet another roadblock to action.<div id="entry-more" style="line-height: 12px;">The investigative study tracks the political influence wielded by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have harnessed part of the fortune generated by their company, Koch Industries, the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/andreamurphy/2012/11/28/americas-largest-private-companies-2012/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">second largest private corporation in the country</a>, to further their conservative libertarian activism. Charles Lewis, the Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop explained that the I.R.W., a non-profit news organization attached to American University, spent two years focussing on Koch Industries because, “There is no other corporation in the U.S. today, in my view, that is as unabashedly, bare-knuckle aggressive across the board about its own self-interest, in the political process, in the nonprofit-policy-advocacy realm, even increasingly in academia and the broader public marketplace of ideas.” Formerly head of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, Lewis has focussed for years on the way money affects American politics. “The Kochs’ influence, without a doubt, is growing,” he believes. A spokeswoman for the Kochs declined to comment.In its <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_millions_spread_influence_through_nonprofits/" style="text-decoration: none;">multi-part report</a>, “The Koch Club,” written by Lewis, Eric Holmberg, Alexia Campbell, and Lydia Beyoud, the Workshop found that between 2007 and 2011 the Kochs donated $41.2 million to ninety tax-exempt organizations promoting the ultra-libertarian policies that the brothers favor—policies that are often highly advantageous to their corporate interests. In addition, during this same period they gave $30.5 million to two hundred and twenty-one colleges and universities, often to fund academic programs advocating their worldview. Among the positions embraced by the Kochs are fewer government regulations on business, lower taxes, and skepticism about the causes and impact of climate change.Climate-change policy directly affects Koch Industries’s bottom line. Koch Industries, according to Environmental Protection Agency statistics cited in the study, is a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions, the kind of pollution that most scientists believe causes global warming. In 2011, according to the E.P.A.’s greenhouse-gas-reporting database, the company, which has oil refineries in three states, emitted over twenty-four million tons of carbon dioxide, as much as is typically emitted by five million cars.Starting in 2008, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gasses as a form of pollution, accelerating possible Congressional action on climate change, the Koch-funded nonprofit group, Americans for Prosperity, devised the “No Climate Tax” pledge. It has been, according to the study, a component of a remarkably successful campaign to prevent lawmakers from addressing climate change. Two successive efforts to control greenhouse-gas emissions by implementing cap-and-trade energy bills died in the Senate, the latter of which was specifically targeted by A.F.P.’s pledge. By now, four hundred and eleven current office holders nationwide have signed the pledge. Signatories include the entire Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, a third of the members of the House of Representatives as a whole, and a quarter of U.S. senators.The 2010 mid-term elections were a high watermark for the pledge. The Kochs, like many other conservative benefactors, gave generously to efforts to help shift the majority in the House of Representatives from Democratic to Republican. Koch Industries’s political action committee spent $1.3 million on congressional campaigns that year. When Republicans did take control of the House, a huge block of climate-change opponents was empowered. Fully one hundred and fifty-six members of the House of Representatives that year had signed the “No Climate Tax Pledge.” Of the eighty-five freshmen Republican congressmen elected to the House of Representatives in 2010, seventy-six had signed the No Climate Tax pledge. Fifty-seven of those received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’s political action committee. The study notes that more than half of the House members who signed the pledge in the 112th Congress made statements doubting climate-change science, despite the fact that there is overwhelming scientific consensus on the subject.The study recounts that the Kochs have influenced the congressional climate-change debate in other ways, too, which include funding an array of nonprofit groups whose experts have testified in Congress questioning the cause, the severity, and the necessity of, acting on climate change. Since 2007, “Senior staff at more than a dozen Koch-funded nonprofit groups have made frequent trips to testify on Capitol Hill in favor of deregulation,” of the environment and energy sector, the study says.The No Climate Tax pledge has made inroads at the state level, as well. In just the three states of Missouri, Michigan, and Kansas, where Koch Industries has its headquarters, forty-eight office holders have now signed the pledge. Nationwide, it has penetrated even the most local levels. Signatories now include the Oklahoma superintendent of schools, the Idaho Treasurer, and three justices of the peace in Arkansas.Lewis concludes that “One of the overarching themes from what we have found is that,” when it comes to blocking action on climate change, “things obviously go better with Koch!”Due to an editing error, this article originally, and incorrectly, contained quotation marks around a paraphrased description of <a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/the-pledge/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">the pledge</a>; the punctuation has since been corrected.</div>

Read more: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/07/the-kochs-and-the-action-on-global-warming.html?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz2YTyLzVcr" style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/07/the-kochs-and-the-action-on-global-warming.html?printable=true¤tPage=all#ixzz2YTyLzVcr</a></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><h1 style="margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_climate_pledge_strategy/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Koch: Climate pledge strategy continues to grow</a></h1><p class="byline" style="margin: 3px 0px 2px; padding: 0px 0px 3px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(102, 102, 102); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 15.2px; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.16em;">BY <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/people/contributors/eric-holmberg/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">ERIC HOLMBERG </a>, <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/people/interngraduate-assistants/alexia-campbell/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">ALEXIA CAMPBELL</a>Monday, July 1st, 2013 <a class="stbutton stico_default" title="ShareThis via email, AIM, social bookmarking and networking sites, etc." st_page="home" style="margin: 0px; padding: 1px 5px 5px 22px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; background-image: url(" http="http" w.sharethis.com="w.sharethis.com" images="images" share-icon-16x16.png="share-icon-16x16.png" cxnid="1000014.0NXC" important="important" background-attachment="background-attachment" scroll="scroll" background-position="background-position" px="px" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat">ShareThis</a>Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own the oil and chemicals conglomerate Koch Industries, may have failed to get a Republican into the White House in 2012, but they're succeeding in a broad national push for deregulation. A quarter of senators and more than one-third of representatives have signed a <a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/pledge-signatories/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">little-known pledge</a> — backed by the Kochs — not to spend any money to fight climate change without an equivalent amount of tax cuts.They are among 411 current office-holders and politicians, including Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli II, Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, three members of the Railroad Commission of Texas, the Oklahoma schools superintendent, the Idaho state treasurer and three justices of the peace in Arkansas <a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/pledge-signatories/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">who have signed</a> the “No Climate Tax Pledge.”The pledge was created by the libertarian grassroots organization Americans for Prosperity (AFP) in 2008.  AFP was co-founded in 2004 by the Koch brothers and Koch Industries board member <a href="http://mercatus.org/richard-fink" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Richard Fink</a>, a former economics professor and executive vice president at George Mason University.The Investigative Reporting Workshop has tracked the No Climate Tax Pledge since its beginnings in July 2008 when it got its first signer, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, home to Koch Industries headquarters. While the pledge began with a marginal following, an energized turnout of conservative voters in the 2010 election swept 85 freshman Republicans into the House. Of those 85 Republicans, 76 signed the Koch pledge as candidates. And 57 of those 76 received campaign contributions from Koch Industries’ political action committee.With the support of these newly elected Republicans, from 2011 to 2013, Congress passed increasingly smaller budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), attempted to strip the agency of varying regulatory powers and discouraged policies to address climate change across multiple federal agencies, according to the Workshop’s analysis.In addition, senior staff at more than a dozen Koch-funded nonprofit groups have made frequent trips to testify on Capitol Hill in favor of federal deregulation. One of their top causes: fighting environmental laws and government spending on alternative energy. That includes promoting American consumption of oil and coal, blaming environmental laws for hurting the economy and questioning the science behind global warming. Since 2011, about a dozen groups testified on the issue during committee hearings at least 30 times.President Obama called for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/us/politics/23obama.text.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">new action on climate change</a> on June 25 in a speech at Georgetown University, showcasing initiatives that would bypass Congress. These include directing the EPA to establish carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants; providing loans for cleaner fossil fuel projects; directing the Department of Interior to permit wind and solar projects on public lands; setting new standards for appliances and federal buildings. And although the initiative is getting pushback from some in both parties and in industry, who see it as as over-reaching, James Valvo, AFP's policy director, said the president's efforts have nothing to do with the pledge.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">CONTINUE TO CAST DOUBT</h2>Staffers from some Koch-funded nonprofit groups have continued to testify before Congress, sowing doubt about climate change in spite of scientists' consensus that global warming exists, that it warrants concern and that it is tied to human behavior. Recent 2013 testimony includes:• On Feb. 5, Mary Hutzler, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that research shows America has an abundance of fossil fuel reserves that could power the nation for nearly 600 years.Hutzler urged lawmakers to allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, off the coast of the southern United States and in the Green River that runs through Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.“Our economy needs the lasting stimulus that robust energy development on federal lands and waters would provide,” she said, according to the committee transcript.  • On Feb. 14, her colleague, Daniel Simmons, director of Regulatory and State Affairs at the Institute for Energy Research, told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that environmental regulation of the oil industry is to blame for the rising cost of gasoline. He also suggested opening up the same federal lands to oil and gas drilling. • A month later, on March 13, Hutzler testified during a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology that federal subsidies of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources had failed to make America energy independent. She argued that the fuels receiving the most government money produced the least amount of energy. • On April 24, an energy policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized federal incentives for companies that make fuel-efficient cars. • On April 25, Simmons urged members of the House Committee on Natural Resources to support a bill that would allow companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, in waters belonging to the United States and Mexico. At the same hearing, research fellows at the Heritage Foundation also testified in favor of the bill. • On May 7, Paul Knappenberger, assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, told members of House Committee on Science, Space and Technology that carbon dioxide emissions from the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline would have an insignificant impact on climate change. He also challenged the notion of a scientific consensus linking carbon dioxide emissions to climate change.“The more we learn, the less responsive it seems that the earth’s average temperature is to human carbon-dioxide emissions,” Knappenberger said. And testimony last year included this:• On Sept. 11, 2012: David Kreutzer, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, emphasized uncertainty about carbon dioxide’s role in global warming during a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Kreutzer criticized the EPA’s funding of environmental programs in developing countries, adding that “the magnitude of carbon dioxide’s impact on global warming is, in fact, not settled.”Other Koch-funded groups whose staff and researchers have testified in recent years against federal environmental regulation are the George C. Marshall Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. The Heritage Foundation said large donors such as the Kochs have no influence on the research done by the conservative think tank. The Koch foundations gave $1.8 million to Heritage from 2007 to 2011, according to IRS records. The money funds general operations and not any specific programs, said John Von Kannon, vice president and senior counselor of development for Heritage.“Our requests to them are very clear on that,” Von Kannon said.Heritage gets most of its money from more than 600,000 individual donors, minimizing the influence of any one person or group, he said. Donors don’t ask Heritage staff to testify on Capitol Hill, he added.“They tell us, ‘We like what you’re doing, and we want to support you,’ ” Von Kannon said.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">REGULATING GREENHOUSE GASES </h2>In April 2007, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040200487.html" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">U.S. Supreme Court decided</a> in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, said that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, among others — under the Clean Air Act.The Supreme Court’s decision accelerated the climate change debate in Congress, propelled by two major cap-and-trade bills in three years. Those bills would have put limits on the amount of greenhouse gases emitted nationally. Both bills died in the Senate, and a cap-and-trade system — a free-market approach under which limits are placed on certain emissions or pollutants, and companies can sell the unused portion of their limits to other companies — never passed. While the proposals were unsuccessful, they helped foster a growing opposition, including creation of the No Climate Tax Pledge in the summer of 2008, just weeks after the first cap-and-trade bill failed.James Valvo helped recruit the first federal politicians to sign the pledge. He said AFP was concerned about the intrusion of government into the private market.“We really wanted to participate in that debate and discussion about what was going to happen with cap-and-trade, which we saw as a very big threat to domestic economic freedom, and we designed the pledge in a way that didn’t have climate change (science) at the center of it,” Valvo said.These bills and the likelihood of a new administration that acknowledged the problem of climate change and also supported cap-and-trade legislation — both major party presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama did in the 2008 election — galvanized the oil and gas companies into action. Their cumulative lobbying expenditures in Washington shot up from $360 million during the second term of the George W. Bush administration to $612 million between 2009 through 2012, Obama’s first term, a 59 percent increase, according to <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01&year=2012" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Center for Responsive Politics</a> data. While there are no national limits on greenhouse gases, Congress did create a program to measure them. The last paragraph of the EPA’s fiscal year 2008 budget earmarked $3.5 million to establish a greenhouse gas reporting program. The program tracks the largest emitters, which account for 85 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2011, the most recent data available, Koch Industries and its subsidiaries emitted more than 24 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from 50 sites, according to the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts. That is slightly more than the country’s highest polluting power plant or equal to the annual emissions of 5 million cars. Koch Industries ranks as the 27th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the United States, according to PERI. <h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">THE EVOLUTION OF THE PLEDGE</h2>Sen. Roberts was the <a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/proberts.pdf" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">first member of Congress to sign </a>the Americans for Prosperity pledge, on July 26, 2008, just a few weeks after that summer’s cap-and-trade bill failed.At the federal level, progress on the pledge started slowly. “The reaction was mixed, probably,” Valvo said. “A pledge is not an easy thing to launch. People are a little skeptical about pledges and what they mean and how they impact them.”Only two senators and 12 representatives signed up by the end of 2008. But AFP’s state chapters had made inroads, particularly in Kansas, Missouri and Michigan. They convinced more than 60 politicians in those three states to sign the pledge in those early days.One of the biggest turning points for Americans for Prosperity was when the House Republican leadership — then-Minority Leader John Boehner, Minority Whip Eric Cantor and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence — signed the pledge in April 2009.“As somebody who worked the issue, to say we went from something where we were sort of a scrappy outlier and it was hard to get people to do it, now this is the established position. I thought that was a pretty big deal,” Valvo said.Americans for Prosperity continued to pursue state politicians and candidates preparing to run for Congress in 2010. “From a strategy standpoint,” Valvo said, “You have to sign up people you know aren’t going to win just so you can go to the one frontrunner in the race and say, ‘Hey, you know you’re not on here. Everybody else in the race is on here. What’s your position on this issue?’ More often than not, they say, ‘Oh, yeah, I agree with you. It just hadn’t come to my attention yet.’ And then they sign and then that person goes into office.”Before the 2010 election, 770 officeholders and candidates had signed the pledge. And 156 were elected to the House, making up more than a third of the body.(Charles and David Koch were also active in the 2010 election. Koch Industries’ PAC gave more than $1.3 million to 213 prospective senators and representatives. Charles and David Koch and their wives personally gave more than $400,000, all going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.)“I think it was really important to the pledge and really moved it up to the next level when those folks came in to Congress,” Valvo said.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">ATTEMPTING TO DEFUND, LIMIT THE EPA </h2>The first chance that the bloc of 85 freshman Republicans had to influence environmental policy was with H.R. 1, the bill that would fund the federal government for fiscal year 2011. The House passed a 27 percent budget cut for the EPA, which, had it passed the Senate, would have been the agency’s largest cut since 1981. “We were trying to tell our brothers on the Republican side that they’re never going to get this through the Senate, but they were posturing,” said Norm Dicks, a Democrat, and the former ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee. “They wanted to make the cuts. They thought they were going to win political points with the Tea Party-types for cutting the EPA budget.”Lawmakers also attempted other cuts by proposing 162 amendments, 22 of which would have cut EPA programs or limited the government’s enforcement of environmental regulations and its ability to study climate change. However, H.R. 1 never became law because the House and Senate were not able to reach a budget compromise until April 2011, when H.R. 1473 narrowly avoided a government shutdown. After negotiations with the Senate, the two houses agreed on a 15.6 percent cut, the largest enacted cut since the EPA lost 16 percent of its budget in 1986. The 22 amendments proposed in H.R. 1 signaled how this group of freshmen Republicans, and pledge-signers, wanted to limit the EPA and climate-change research. <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate-zombie-caucus/?mobile=nc" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Think Progress,</a> a liberal blog, researched climate change statements by members of the 112th Congress, and found many members of Congress were doubtful of climate-change science. The Investigative Reporting Workshop matched the Think Progress statements with the list of members of Congress who signed the pledge from Nov. 16, 2010, and found 17 of the 20 Senators who had signed the pledge said they doubted climate change science, as did 78 of the 156 representatives who had signed the pledge. Throughout the House's debate on H.R. 1, several pledge signers proposed amendments that would limit government regulation of climate change.Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Republican who represents the Kansas district where Koch Industries is headquartered, and is a signer of the No Climate Tax Pledge, received $10,000 from Koch Industries PAC in the 2010 election.Once in the House, Pompeo <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/02/17/174918/pompeo-koch-amendment/?mobile=nc" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">proposed an amendment</a> to H.R. 1 to cut $8.5 million, or roughly half the fiscal year 2010 budget, from the EPA’s greenhouse gas reporting program. Pompeo said at the time, “This data is the very foundation of the EPA's effort to pursue its radical anti-jobs agenda.”Another amendment was proposed by Republican Rep. John Carter of Texas, who wanted to ban using money to enforce a rule on cement manufacturing emissions. He was one of the first representatives to sign the No Climate Tax Pledge. Carter and two other Texas Republicans proposed an amendment that would have prohibited the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases emitting from stationary sources, such as factories. Republican Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, also in that first group of representatives to sign the pledge, sponsored an amendment — which passed — to stop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from creating a National Climate Service, which was intended to be “a one-stop shop” for climate information. Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia sponsored an amendment — which passed — that stopped funds for EPA guidelines on surface coal mining operations. Republican Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota signed the pledge in 2010 and received $5,000 from KochPAC. She sponsored an amendment — which passed — to prohibit money from being used to change the air quality standards regarding coarse particulate matter (dust). However, neither these amendments nor the bill survived in the Senate.Many of the 85 freshman Republicans sponsored bills in the House to limit the EPA’s regulatory power or to expand oil and natural gas drilling. Koch Industries Public Sector LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, lobbied for H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would have rolled back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases. The bill was sponsored by Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan and co-signed by 92 Republicans (and three Democrats), 61 of whom also signed the pledge. Had it passed, the Energy Climate Prevention Act would have prevented the EPA from defining greenhouse gases as air pollutants and prohibited all federal research or programs on climate change research.In June 2011, Rep. Griffith of Virginia also introduced the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, which would have allowed companies to ignore future EPA rules on industrial boiler and heater emissions while delaying the implementation of any rules that would constitute the “least burdensome regulatory alternative.” The bill eventually gained 101 Republican and 25 Democratic co-sponsors, 67 of whom signed the No Climate Tax Pledge.Griffith said he signed the No Climate Tax pledge because he believes national limits on greenhouse-gas emissions harm Virginia’s coal industry and the jobs it provides. He said he didn’t feel any pressure to sign the pledge from Americans for Prosperity, which he credits with helping him win a seat in Congress in 2010 by campaigning against the policies of his Democratic predecessor, Rick Boucher. Griffith also said that the $5,000 his campaign received from Koch Industries in June 2010 had no influence on his decision to sign the pledge less than two weeks later. Opposing President Obama’s “war on the coal industry” was a top issue during his campaign, he said.“When I was running in early 2010, this was already on my agenda,” Griffith said. “I was talking about these things long before I even knew that the Koch brothers and AFP were involved in these issues.” The pledge isn't limited to those in Washington. Among other office-holders who signed it is Oklahoma Schools Superintendent Janet Barresi, who declined to talk about her reasons for signing the pledge in August 2010. But through her press secretary, Barresi said in statement that the school district relies on property taxes from power plants and oil and gas production."Oklahoma's schools depend on revenue from fossil fuels, and the destructive power of a tax on these fuels is not justified by questionable science," Barresi said in the statement.Contributing: Julia Broemmel</div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_millions_spread_influence_through_nonprofits/">http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_millions_spread_influence_through_nonprofits/</a></div><div>
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</div><div>Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held corporations in the world and principally owned by billionaires Charles and David Koch, has developed what may be the best funded, multifaceted, public policy, political and educational presence in the nation today.From direct political influence and robust lobbying to nonprofit policy research and advocacy, and even increasingly in academia and the broader public “marketplace of ideas,” this extensive, cross-sector Koch club or network appears to be unprecedented in size, scope and funding. And the relationship between these for-profit and nonprofit entities is often mutually reinforcing to the direct financial and political interests of the behemoth corporation — broadly characterized as deregulation, limited government and free markets.The cumulative cost to Koch Industries and Charles and David Koch for this extraordinary alchemy of political and lobbying influence, nonprofit public policy underwriting and educational institutional support was $134 million over a recent five-year period. The global conglomerate has 60,000 employees and annual revenue of $115 billion and estimated pretax profit margins of 10 percent, according to <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2012/12/05/inside-the-koch-empire-how-the-brothers-plan-to-reshape-america/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Forbes.</a>An analysis by the Investigative Reporting Workshop found that from 2007 through 2011, Koch private foundations gave $41.2 million to 89 nonprofit organizations and an annual libertarian conference. Koch Industries and Charles and David Koch contributed $8.7 million to candidates and the Republican Party in the three election cycles between 2007 through 2012. In addition, Koch private foundations contributed $30.5 million to 221 U.S. colleges and universities and $46.3 million to the arts and other more traditionally charitable purposes during this period.And while Koch Industries’ lobbyists were spending $53.9 million to further the giant corporation’s federal and state policy agenda, the nonprofits it funded were simultaneously “educating” the public and lawmakers about energy, the environment and other issues in public testimony on Capitol Hill.For example, in 2011 and 2012, Koch Industries Public Sector LLC, the lobbying arm of Koch Industries, advocated for the Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would have rolled back the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could regulate greenhouse gases. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and co-signed by 92 Republicans (and three Democrats), 61 of whom signed an anti-climate tax “pledge.” An economist with the American Council for Capital Formation — a nonprofit group that receives Koch money — testified about that same bill before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Margo Thorning told members of the House in February 2011 that regulation of greenhouse gas emissions “makes little economic or environmental sense,” according to her testimony.There were similar confluences of interest, with Koch foundation-funded, tax-exempt nonprofits and Koch’s commercial lobbyists saying similar things about the same pending legislation on Capitol Hill — such as in 2007-2008 on the proposed America’s Climate Security Act. In 2011 and 2012, Koch Industries and one of its supported nonprofits, the Heritage Foundation, “educated” lawmakers and their staff in their respective ways regarding the proposed New Alternatives Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act legislation.Altogether, since 2007, Koch nonprofit organizations testified before U.S. Senate and House of Representatives committees or subcommittees at least 49 times, according to lobbying disclosure information compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and testimony available from Congressional Quarterly/Roll Call.Private foundations cannot by law “be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests,” and they are required by law to disclose their charitable contributions to the Internal Revenue Service. But enforcement of potential violations is generally regarded to be sporadic and somewhat mysterious. For example, even if the IRS actually decides to investigate a private foundation or tax-exempt organization grantees, initial communications between the government and the organization in question are private — no formal notice is available in any public record.<div style="margin: 5px 15px 0px 0px; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 12.8px; float: left; width: 140px; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat;">Koch moneyFrom 2007-2011, Koch private foundations contributed the following:89 nonprofits and one annual conference received:<img src="http://irw.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2Fkoch-donation-412.jpg" border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent;" />

221 U.S. colleges and universities received:<img src="http://irw.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2Fkoch-donation-305.jpg" border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent;" />The arts, humanities, medicine and youth organizations received:<img src="http://irw.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2Fkoch-donation-463.jpg" border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent;" />Source: Research by 
Eric Holmberg, based on 990 IRS forms; graphic by Cristina Keane, Investigative 
Reporting Workshop</div>The Workshop did not find evidence of any pending publicly disclosed inquiry or action by the IRS against any of the five Koch-funded foundations.Lawyer Gregory L. Colvin of Adler & Colvin in San Francisco, who has represented conservative and liberal IRS tax-exempt nonprofit organizations for 35 years, <a href="http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/04-09-13ColvinTestimony.pdf" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">told Congress </a>in April and the Workshop more broadly last week, “The tax rules are vague, unpredictable, and unevenly applied. Only the most flagrant violations could be knowing, willful, or deliberate and subject to criminal prosecution.” The scandal-ridden IRS, notoriously underfunded and operating under antiquated, decades-old laws and regulations, has another debilitating limitation. According to Marcus Owens, the former director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS and now a tax lawyer in private practice at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, “Congress has drafted the rules that the IRS must abide by [and the precise extent to which nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations can operate politically or legislatively or in the regulatory context of whether activities are for public or private benefit], and that allows a pretty wide array of activities.”And against the backdrop of the current IRS scandal and the additional scrutiny of IRS tax enforcement, it now appears that the Koch brothers are moving toward even less transparency, beyond giving millions of dollars to such controversial “dark money” organizations as Donors Trust (whose secret money efforts have been exposed in the past year in detail by the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/14/12151/following-donors-trust-money-trail" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a> and other news outlets).A few months ago, Koch strategists reportedly set up two new, even more secretive, 501(c)6 money-funneling organizations to further bolster and help underwrite their national network, mimicking the opaque approach of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/28/173170193/after-tough-2012-conservative-koch-brothers-regroup" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">NPR</a>, now more of the Koch’s considerable largesse will be directed to support a “business league” that will push business-friendly legislation in the states, the Association for American Innovation (which does not yet appear to have a website), and a public “messaging niche” social welfare nonprofit group called <a href="http://www.americancommitment.org/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">American Commitment</a>.Charles Koch, David Koch and Koch Industries Executive Vice President Richard Fink declined to be interviewed for this report. In an email response to our request for these interviews, Melissa Cohlmia, director of corporate communication for Koch Industries Public Sector, LLC, wrote, “Your attempts to silence us and others with whom you disagree are troubling to all Americans who cherish free speech and the First Amendment. You have a right to engage in advocacy journalism and we respect that right. However, we choose to engage with journalists who are balanced, truthful, and fair-minded. We therefore decline your request for interviews.”We contacted officials at some of the nonprofits receiving the most Koch foundation funding during this five-year period — the George Mason University Foundation ($16.3 million); the Institute for Humane Studies ($10.3 million) and the Mercatus Center ($3.7 million), both of which are affiliated with George Mason University; Americans for Prosperity Foundation ($3.6 million); Donors Trust ($3.3 million); and the Charles Koch Institute ($2.8 million).Their sentiments were similar to those expressed by the chief financial officer of the pro-business, libertarian <a href="http://www.theihs.org/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Institute for Humane Studies</a>, Gary Leff, who told the Workshop, “We’re not a political organization. … We have no position on current legislation. We don’t do lobbying of any kind. Our work complies with our status as a 501(c)3. It would be illegal for us to get involved in politics of any kind.” When asked why the institute doesn’t disclose its donors on its website, he said, “I’m surprised you ask that. Nobody really ever asks us that. It is standard practice not to disclose donors on the Web. We have plaques in our office recognizing our contributors.” Others echoed similar sentiments, also stressing the politically innocuous nature of their respective enterprises.Few of the 89 nonprofit organizations to which Koch private foundations gave contributions from 2007 through 2011 disclose the sources of their funding on their websites; we obtained the identities of which organizations received these contributions from Koch foundation annual IRS 990 forms. (To access the IRS 990 annual reports for 2007-2011, for both the funding foundations and the recipient nonprofit organizations, go <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/documents/the-koch-club/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">here</a>.)<div style="margin: 5px 15px 0px 0px; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid rgb(102, 102, 102); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: none; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 12.8px; float: left; width: 307px; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat;">Top recipientsKoch foundations donated to 221 universities during the 2007-2011 period, giving as little as $1,000 to Wisconsin Lutheran College and more than $16 million to George Mason University. The Kochs donated to 89 nonprofits and one annual conference, all of which have public policy and educational missions synchronous with those of the Koch corporation — deregulation, limited government and free markets.Top 5 college and university recipients<img src="http://irw.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2Fkoch-university-chart.png" border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent;" />

Top 5 nonprofit recipients in millions of dollars<img src="http://irw.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2Fkoch-foundation-chart.png" border="0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent;" /> Source: Research by Eric Holmberg,  graphic by 
Cristina Keane, Investigative Reporting Workshop</div>From 2007 through 2011, the five major Koch-funded, private foundations contributed a reported total of $117.9 million. The breakdown by foundation and amount:• Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, $52.7 million• David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, $41.3 million (includes a non-public, policy-related donation to the Lincoln Center of $35 million)• Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, $12.7 million• Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation, $8 million• Knowledge and Progress Fund, $3.3 million (all of which was given to Donors Trust, which distributes undisclosed “dark money” throughout the country).The first time Koch Industries appeared on the national political radar was during the 1996 elections. The following year the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigated alleged campaign finance abuses by both political parties, including the political campaign activities of Koch Industries apparently involving both for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations in key congressional races across the country.What is striking today is the extent to which the corporation has since grown and also exponentially increased its campaign and public policy-related activities nationwide. (For more about the extent of Koch Industries’ activities and the first evident use of third-party “cutout” organizations to elude transparency and disclosure in the 1996 elections, see our <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch-1996_marks_beginning/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">related story</a>.) <h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">THE KOCH CHORUS, SINGING IN CONCERT</h2>Besides the extraordinary net worth and substantial philanthropy overall of Koch Industries’ principal owners, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, what is it about them that makes them unusual and controversial? After all, there are millions of companies and, according to Forbes magazine, more than 1,400 billionaires in the world. The two brothers are <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">sixth in worldwide wealth</a> and tied for <a href="http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">fourth among the wealthiest Americans</a>, according to Forbes. According to the <a href="http://www.kochind.com/FactsSheets/KochFacts.aspx" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">company’s website</a>, Koch businesses extend from refining, chemicals and biofuels, to forest and consumer products, fertilizers, polymers and fibers, commodity trading and investment services, minerals and ranching.Some of its various far-flung enterprises have repeatedly violated environmental and other laws in the U.S. and around the world, and they have been fined hundreds of millions of dollars, documented most extensively by Bloomberg Markets Magazine (by Asjylyn Loder and David Evans and 14 other reporters around the world, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">“Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales,”</a> Oct. 3, 2011).For years, Charles and David Koch have aggressively exercised their constitutional rights, participating in politics through their checkbook by helping to bankroll libertarian and conservative political organizations. Most recently they have helped to underwrite the tea party political movement, as well as support a large number of Republican candidates in national and state politics. Initially more hidden, the Koch brothers have increasingly emerged into the public spotlight, especially since publication of an extensively reported article in The New Yorker about “the billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama” (by staff writer Jane Mayer, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">“Covert Operations,” </a>Aug. 30, 2010, and in subsequent articles).Such discreet electoral mischief and even political maneuvering through others by the Kochs was first noticed two decades ago in Congress and elsewhere in Washington (by various news organizations, including the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/news/Koch-Industries" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Center for Public Integrity</a> in “The Buying of the President,” Avon Books/1996, pages 127-130, and since). For example, Koch Foundations contributed $19 million between 1988 and 1993 to the libertarian Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy, and with the help of a board officer of the latter organization, helped write and insert a passage in then-Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole’s regulatory reform bill. That bill would have essentially nullified a pending $54 million civil lawsuit against Koch Industries brought by the U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Customs and the Environmental Protection Agency for the company’s 300 oil spills in six states. The bill died. In 2000, Koch Industries agreed to pay a <a href="http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/016bcfb1deb9fed85256aca005d74df/981d17e5ab07246f8525686500621079?OpenDocument" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">$30 million fine</a> to the U.S. government and the state of Texas for “illegally discharged crude oil and petroleum products.”In 1992, David Koch told National Journal that he viewed himself as an “opportunist," saying, “My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy and to maximize personal freedoms. … By supporting all of these [nonprofit] organizations I am trying to support different approaches to achieve those objectives. It’s almost like an investor investing in a whole variety of companies.”<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">THE “NO CLIMATE TAX PLEDGE”</h2>Fast forward to 2011.The House of Representatives voted to slash the EPA budget by 27 percent, one of the biggest cuts since President Richard Nixon and the Congress created the agency in 1970. The Senate subsequently modified the severity of these cuts, and the budget was ultimately cut by nearly 16 percent. What is less known is that more than 100 House members — all Republicans, many tea party members — signed a little-known “pledge” (similar to the Grover Norquist no tax increase pledge) backed by the Koch brothers promising to not spend any federal money to fight climate change without an equal amount of tax cuts.Most of the pledge signers received campaign contributions from Charles or David Koch or Koch Industries. The Workshop has tracked the signing of the pledge by 411 current state and federal politicians nationwide (all Republicans except four Democrats and two Independents at the state level). Among them are such prominent state officials as Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia.The first person to sign the Koch-backed pledge was Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, where Koch Industries is headquartered. Of the 85 conservative Republicans first elected to the House of Representatives in 2010, 76 signed the pledge and, of those, 57 received money from Koch Industries’ political action committee. The members of Congress who signed the pledge have also introduced several bills aimed at limiting EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and limiting regulation of the nation’s biggest polluters. (For more about the “No Climate Tax Pledge,” see our <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/the_koch_club/story/Koch_climate_pledge_strategy/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">related story</a>.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">INFLUENCING THE NEWS MEDIA</h2>In recent months, The New York Times and other news organizations have <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/business/media/koch-brothers-making-play-for-tribunes-newspapers.html?r=0" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">reported</a> that Charles and David Koch are taking an interest in possibly buying the Tribune Media Company, which owns several major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant.The billionaires’ interest in journalism began in 2009 with the creation of the <a href="http://franklincenterhq.org/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.</a> In 2011, according to the <a href="http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_koch_brothers_media_invest.php?page=all" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Columbia Journalism Review</a>, 95 percent of the center’s income came from<a href="http://www.donorstrust.org/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Donors Trust</a>, bankrolled first and foremost by the Koch-funded foundations ($3.3 million since 2008, according to IRS records). The Franklin Center has created a project called <a href="http://watchdog.org/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Watchdog.org,</a> which bills itself as “a collection of independent journalists covering state-specific and local government activity.” They are based in the same office in Alexandria, Va. With 40 bureaus or “partner” organizations in 40 states, Franklin Center and Watchdog.org told CJR that they “conform to the Society of Professional Journalists standards, follow AP style and are not partisan or political.” Others, including CJR, disagree, noting that they “occasionally blur reporting and opinion and go beyond the facts of [their] findings.”<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">INFLUENCING ELECTIONS</h2>The Investigative Reporting Workshop tracked Charles and David Koch’s influence in elections by looking at the totality of their activity. The Kochs personally give money to candidates and campaigns. This is and has been a transparent process. Charles and David Koch and their wives have personally given $1.36 million to candidates since the 2006 election cycle, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics. All but $200 went to Republicans. Employees of Koch Industries and its subsidiaries also give money to candidates and campaigns. Since 2006, those employees have contributed more than $2 million to candidates and campaigns, with the vast majority, all but $47,054, going to Republicans, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.The Kochs also have a political action committee that can give a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate per campaign. That means that, typically, KochPAC can give $10,000 to a candidate during an election cycle: $5,000 during the primary campaign and $5,000 during the general election campaign. In 2010, their political action committee gave more than $1.3 million to 213 prospective senators and representatives, with most of that money, again, going to Republicans.The Kochs also influence elections through their libertarian grass-roots organizing organization, Americans for Prosperity. Outside groups such as Americans for Prosperity have overtaken traditional means of spending, such as through the two parties’ committees. In the 2012 election cycle, outside groups spent approximately $1 billion, according to the<a href="http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/outside-spending-2012/overview/" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"> Sunlight Foundation.</a> The Republican National Committee wrote of the new political landscape, “The result is an illogical system where candidates and their parties no longer have the loudest voices in campaigns or even the ability to determine the issues debated in campaigns. Outside groups now play an expanded role affecting federal races and, in some ways, overshadow state parties in primary and general elections.” In 2012, Americans for Prosperity ranked fifth among those outside groups, spending more than $36 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Most of that money was spent on ads opposing President Barack Obama. The only other large ad buys made by Americans for Prosperity in the 2012 election cycle were $1.5 million to oppose Tammy Baldwin, the Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate (she won anyway) and $142,000 to oppose Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic U.S. senator and governor who was running for the Senate from Nebraska (he lost).When asked about the Americans for Prosperity television ads that ran on the airwaves in his race, Kerrey said, “They trashed the living shit out of me. … They turned [the public’s thinking] around.” When Kerrey entered the race, he said his approval ratings were around 58 percent favorable and 32 percent unfavorable, and when it was all over and he had lost, his approval ratings had dropped precipitously and the negatives had risen. “It was quite impressive, quite powerful. … They bought their way into political success.”In addition to buying political advertisements, Americans for Prosperity succeeds because it has volunteers on the ground talking directly to voters. As the Republican National Committee explained in its post-mortem of the 2012 election, “Democrats had the clear edge on new media and ground game, in terms of both reach and effectiveness. Obama’s campaign knocked on twice as many doors as the Romney campaign, and Obama’s campaign had a ballot edge among those contacted by both campaigns.” By targeting key sets of voters and talking with them face to face, they were more likely to vote for that party. Americans for Prosperity’s organizational role is to talk to those volunteers and train them to effectively talk to voters.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">INFLUENTIAL IDEAS</h2>Think tanks in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals across the country primarily serve three major functions: First, they write policy papers that analyze topics. Second, they suggest remedies in the form of new legislation to solve identified problems. These policy papers can be quoted by politicians to support their arguments and help set the “parameters of discourse,” as veteran journalist and author Bill Greider once described it, the intellectual groundwork preliminary to the later legislative maneuverings, bill draftsmanship and hearing process. The third major function of think tanks is that their experts regularly testify before Congress and can spend up to 20 percent of their time lobbying. They also make media appearances on television and radio news programs, especially on the 24-hour cable news networks, to make their ideas known to a wider audience and win over voters and lawmakers to their point of view.The Investigative Reporting Workshop compiled a database of more than 4,000 entries to track the commonalities among people who work in the Koch ecosystem. We saw people move across multiple organizations that the Kochs donate to and discovered the same people serving on many of the boards of directors. For instance, Nicole Kurokawa Neily began as a Koch Summer Fellow, worked for the Cato Institute and FreedomWorks, wrote papers for Americans for Prosperity’s Illinois chapter and eventually became executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum. Until 2008, the forum was run by Nancy Pfotenhauer, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries.In addition to funding the think tanks that curate libertarian ideas and policies, the Kochs influence Congress in a more traditional way by employing lobbyists to sculpt bills to their advantage. The Kochs lobby Congress on mostly environmental or energy issues through a variety of avenues. They lobby Congress through Koch Industries, but most of their lobbying activity goes through its government and public affairs arm, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC. Koch Companies Public Sector alone employed 26 lobbyists from seven firms who lobbied on more than 70 specific bills in the House and Senate in 2012. They employed 32 lobbyists in 2011, according to lobbying disclosure records. Koch Companies Public Sector spent nearly $19 million lobbying Congress in 2011 and 2012.The only other lobbying records came from companies that are now subsidiaries to Koch Industries. Flint Hills Resources, which stopped lobbying in 2009, spent $3.3 million that year. Georgia-Pacific and INVISTA each stopped lobbying separately from Koch Industries in 2008.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 0px 4px; border-width: 0px 0px 4px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(181, 18, 27); outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase;">INFLUENCING THE NEXT GENERATION</h2>The Kochs have been involved in influencing higher education for more than 30 years, beginning with what is now called the Mercatus Center and the Institute for Humane Studies, both based at George Mason University in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Between 2007 and 2011, the Kochs gave <a href="http://bit.ly/14zToct" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">$30.5 million to 221 universities </a>through their charitable foundations. More than half of that giving, roughly $16 million, has gone to George Mason University and its foundation. Recently, however, the Koch brothers’ influence has expanded outside Northern Virginia and created potential conflicts of interest for the universities accepting their donations.The May-June 2012 issue of <a href="http://www.aaup.org/article/fine-print-restrictive-grants-and-academic-freedom#.UdARVT7TWqw" target="blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Academe</a>, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors, focused on corporate influence in higher education. Kent Miller and Ray Bellamy wrote about the Koch influence in the Florida State University economics department. The Charles G. Koch Foundation offered to give the university $1.5 million to hire two assistant professors and fund fellowships and undergraduate curriculum on free-enterprise topics. The foundation appointed an advisory board that would award money to faculty and make sure that the work they completed fit with the foundation’s mission. Miller and Bellamy wrote, “In exchange for his ‘gift,’ the donor got to assign specific readings, select speakers brought to campus and instruct them with regard to the focus of their lectures, shape the curriculum with new courses and specify the number of students in the courses, name the program’s director, and initiate a student club.”It’s not just at Florida State, which was a high-profile case, but also at other universities where the Kochs and John Allison, retired chairman and CEO of the financial institution BB&T, have donated money. Allison is on the board of directors at the Mercatus Center, which is funded by the Kochs, and following an intense fight in which the Kochs backed him, is now the president of the Cato Institute. BB&T sponsors chaired professors, typically in economics departments, and the universities where they sponsor a chaired professor often line up with where the Kochs donate.An Investigative Reporting Workshop analysis found that the Kochs had donated to 10 universities where there were BB&T-chaired professors, including West Virginia University, Clemson University and smaller universities, such as Hampden-Sydney College and Barton College. According to Inside Higher Ed in 2011, Clemson “spent several years cultivating the Charles G. Koch Foundation to support its Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and has received $1 million thus far.”At the core of the Kochs’ philosophy are the works of Ayn Rand, the objectivist philosopher and author of “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” (Rand’s writings are also emblematic of the readings recommended to students by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University). The new course that the Charles G. Koch Foundation wanted approved at Florida State was called “Market Ethics: The Vices, Virtues, and Values of Capitalism,” featuring the work of Rand as required by the memorandum of understanding. Through their charitable foundations, the Kochs gave $100,000 to the Ayn Rand Institute from 2009 to 2011.And in the interest of full disclosure, in the course of this investigation, we discovered that American University, where the Investigative Reporting Workshop is based (within the School of Communication), received $17,500 in two separate grants from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. The university’s Office of Special Programs (OSP) reports that both grants are for a program called “Lectures in Classical Liberalism,” which is under the direction of Tom Merrill and Alan Levine. Both professors are in the School of Public Affairs.OSP said the following language describes the program that the grants supported:“We seek to build on and expand the program of lectures in classical liberalism funded by the Koch Foundation to date. At least two of these lectures would be designated “Koch Lectures on Classical Liberalism”; all of the funded lectures, however, will discuss some aspect of <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/_{achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Classical_liberalism.html}" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">classical liberalism</a> whether in its theoretical and historical roots or in its contemporary applications. This series of lectures is primarily designed to encourage our students to have a sustained engagement with the ideas of classical liberalism, and secondarily at presenting an opportunity for classical liberal ideas to be heard in the larger university community and the D.C. policy conversation. To that end, we also require our speakers to meet and take questions from our students in an informal session separate from the public lecture, either in one of our classes or in a breakfast or lunch session during the speaker’s campus visit.”This version of the story corrects the name of the person interviewed at The Institute for Humane Studies.</div><div>===</div><div>
</div><h2><a href="http://www.noclimatetax.com/">10-AFP</a> on Nov 2, 2010</h2>

scorecard: http://afpscorecard.org/#vote%23174 61% gop, 0 percent ddemos?

Political Group Ratings: the No Climate Tax Pledge

Source: AFP website

No Climate Tax Pledge: I pledge to the taxpayers of my state, and to the American people, that I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.

Sponsoring organizations: Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEU); National Taxpayers Union (NTU); Institute for Liberty Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen-leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and intrusiveness of government is the best way to promote individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens to support restraining state and federal government growth and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP is more than 1.6 million activists strong, with activists in all 50 states. AFP has 31 state chapters and affiliates. More than 70,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial contribution to AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

<ul>

</li>

<li style=" list-style: none;">Participating counts on VoteMatch question 18. Question 18: Replace coal & oil with alternatives Scores: -2=Strongly oppose; -1=Oppose; 0=neutral; 1=Support; 2=Strongly support.</li>

</li>

<li>Topic: Energy & Oil</li>

</li>

<li>Headline: Signed the No Climate Tax Pledge by <a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Note-AFP.asp">AFP</a> (Score: -2)

</li>

</li>

<li>Key for participation codes: </li>

</li>

<li>Sponsorships: p=sponsored; o=co-sponsored; s=signed </li>

</li>

<li>Memberships: c=chair; m=member; e=endorsed; f=profiled; s=scored </li>

</li>

<li>Resolutions: i=introduced; w=wrote; a=adopted </li>

</li>

<li>Cases: w=wrote; j=joined; d=dissented; c=concurred </li>

</li>

<li>Surveys: '+' supports; '-' opposes. </li>

</ul>

<h2>Democrats participating in 10-AFP</h2>

</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Ralph_Moody_Hall_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Ralph Moody Hall</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Democrat</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Cynthia_Lummis_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Cynthia Lummis</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Wyoming Democrat</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>Republicans participating in 10-AFP</h2>

</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Sandy_Adams_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Sandy Adams</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Todd_Akin_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Todd Akin</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican (Senate run 2012)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Justin_Amash_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Justin Amash</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Kelly_Ayotte_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Kelly Ayotte</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>NH Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/PA/Lou_Barletta_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Lou Barletta</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Pennsylvania Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Gresham_Barrett_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Gresham Barrett</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Carolina Republican (until 2010)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Roscoe_Bartlett_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Roscoe Bartlett</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Maryland Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Joe_Linus_Barton_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Joe Linus Barton</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Charlie_Bass_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Charlie Bass</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New Hampshire Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Dan_Benishek_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Dan Benishek</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Rick_Berg_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rick Berg</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>ND Republican Challenger</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Gus_Bilirakis_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Gus Bilirakis</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Rob_Bishop_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rob Bishop</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Utah Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Diane_Black_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Diane Black</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Tennessee Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Roy_Blunt_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Roy Blunt</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican (until 2010)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/John_Boehner_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Boehner</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/John_Boozman_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Boozman</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>AR Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Mo_Brooks_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mo Brooks</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Alabama Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Paul_Broun_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Paul Broun</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Sam_Brownback_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Sam Brownback</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>KS Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Larry_Bucshon_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Larry Bucshon</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Ann_Marie_Buerkle_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Ann Marie Buerkle</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New York Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Richard_Burr_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Richard Burr</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>NC Republican Sr Senator; previously Representative</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Dan_Burton_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Dan Burton</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican (Retiring 2012)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/John_Campbell_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Campbell</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Quico_Canseco_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Quico Canseco</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/VA/Eric_Cantor_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Eric Cantor</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Virginia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/John_Carter_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Carter</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Steve_Chabot_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Chabot</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Jason_Chaffetz_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jason Chaffetz</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>UT Former Republican Challenger (2011)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Daniel_Coats_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Daniel Coats</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>IN Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NC/John_Howard_Coble_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Howard Coble</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>North Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Tom_Coburn_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Coburn</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>OK Republican Jr Senator; previously Representative</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Mike_Coffman_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Coffman</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Colorado Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Tom_Cole_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Cole</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Oklahoma Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Mike_Conaway_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Conaway</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Michael_Crapo_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Michael Crapo</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>ID Republican Sr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/John_Culberson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Culberson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Nathan_Deal_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Nathan Deal</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>GA Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Jeff_Denham_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jeff Denham</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Scott_DesJarlais_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Scott DesJarlais</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Tennessee Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Sean_Duffy_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Sean Duffy</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Wisconsin Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Jo_Ann_Emerson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jo Ann Emerson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Mary_Fallin_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mary Fallin</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>OK Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/PA/Mike_Fitzpatrick_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Fitzpatrick</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Pennsylvania Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Jeff_Flake_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jeff Flake</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican (Senate run 2012)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/John_Fleming_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Fleming</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Louisiana Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Bill_Flores_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bill Flores</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NC/Virginia_Foxx_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Virginia Foxx</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>North Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Trent_Franks_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Trent Franks</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Cory_Gardner_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Cory Gardner</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Colorado Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NJ/Scott_Garrett_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Scott Garrett</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New Jersey Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Bob_Gibbs_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bob Gibbs</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Chris_Gibson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Chris Gibson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New York Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Phil_Gingrey_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Phil Gingrey</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Gosar_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Paul Gosar</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Trey_Gowdy_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Trey Gowdy</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Kay_Granger_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Kay Granger</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Samuel_Graves_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Samuel Graves</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Tom_Graves_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Graves</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Tim_Griffin_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tim Griffin</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arkansas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/VA/Morgan_Griffith_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Morgan Griffith</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Virginia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Michael_Grimm_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Michael Grimm</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New York Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Frank_Guinta_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Frank Guinta</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New Hanpshire Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Gregg_Harper_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Gregg Harper</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Mississippi Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Andy_Harris_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Andy Harris</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Maryland Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Vicky_Hartzler_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Vicky Hartzler</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Doc_Hastings_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Doc Hastings</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Washington Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Nan_Hayworth_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Nan Hayworth</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New York Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Joe_Heck_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Joe Heck</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Nevada Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Jeb_Hensarling_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jeb Hensarling</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Wally_Herger_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Wally Herger</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Republican (Retiring 2012)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Jaime_Herrera_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jaime Herrera</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Washington Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Tim_Huelskamp_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tim Huelskamp</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Kansas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Bill_Huizenga_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bill Huizenga</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Randy_Hultgren_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Randy Hultgren</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/VA/Robert_Hurt_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Robert Hurt</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Virginia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/James_Inhofe_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">James Inhofe</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>OK Republican Sr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Johnny_Isakson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Johnny Isakson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>GA Republican Jr Senator; previously Representative</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Lynn_Jenkins_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Lynn Jenkins</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Kansas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Mike_Johanns_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Johanns</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>NE Former Republican Governor (2005-2007); elected Senator 2008</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Bill_Johnson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bill Johnson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Ron_Johnson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Ron Johnson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>WI Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NC/Walter_Beaman_Jones_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Walter Beaman Jones</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>North Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Jim_Jordan_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jim Jordan</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/PA/Mike_Kelly_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Kelly</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Pennsylvania Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Jack_Kingston_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jack Kingston</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Adam_Kinzinger_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Adam Kinzinger</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Mark_Kirk_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mark Kirk</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>IL Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Raul_Labrador_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Raul Labrador</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Idaho Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Doug_Lamborn_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Doug Lamborn</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Colorado Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Jeff_Landry_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jeff Landry</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Louisiana Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/James_Lankford_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">James Lankford</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Oklahoma Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Tom_Latham_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Latham</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Iowa Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Bob_Latta_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bob Latta</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Mike_Lee_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Lee</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>UT Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Paul_LePage_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Paul LePage</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>ME Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Billy_Long_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Billy Long</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Frank_Dean_Lucas_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Frank Dean Lucas</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Oklahoma Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Blaine_Luetkemeyer_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Blaine Luetkemeyer</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Missouri Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Connie_Mack_IV_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Connie Mack IV</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>FL Republican Challenger</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Kenny_Marchant_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Kenny Marchant</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/PA/Tom_Marino_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Marino</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Pennsylvania Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Kevin_McCarthy_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Kevin McCarthy</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Tom_McClintock_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom McClintock</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>CA03 Former Republican Challenger (2003)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NC/Patrick_McHenry_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Patrick McHenry</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>North Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/David_McKinley_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">David McKinley</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>West Virginia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Cathy_McMorris-Rodgers_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Cathy McMorris-Rodgers</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Washington Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Candice_Miller_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Candice Miller</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/Gary_Miller_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Gary Miller</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Jeff_Miller_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jeff Miller</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Jerry_Moran_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jerry Moran</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Kansas Republican (until 2010)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Mick_Mulvaney_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mick Mulvaney</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NC/Sue_Myrick_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Sue Myrick</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>North Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Randy_Neugebauer_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Randy Neugebauer</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Kristi_Noem_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Kristi Noem</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Dakota Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Rich_Nugent_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rich Nugent</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Alan_Nunnelee_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Alan Nunnelee</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Mississippi Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Pete_Olson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Pete Olson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Steven_Palazzo_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steven Palazzo</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Mississippi Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Rand_Paul_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rand Paul</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>KY Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Ron_Paul_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Ron Paul</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>POTUS Republican (Libertarian 1988)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Steve_Pearce_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Pearce</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New Mexico Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Mike_Pence_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Pence</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican (Gov. run 2012)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Rick_Perry_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rick Perry</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>TX Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Mike_Pompeo_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Mike Pompeo</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Kansas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Bill_Posey_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bill Posey</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Tom_Price_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Price</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Ben_Quayle_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Ben Quayle</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NY/Tom_Reed_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tom Reed</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New York Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Jim_Renacci_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jim Renacci</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Reid_Ribble_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Reid Ribble</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Wisconsin Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/VA/Scott_Rigell_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Scott Rigell</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Virginia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/David_Rivera_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">David Rivera</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Pat_Roberts_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Pat Roberts</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>KS Republican Sr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Martha_Roby_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Martha Roby</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Alabama Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Todd_Rokita_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Todd Rokita</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Peter_Roskam_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Peter Roskam</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Dennis_Ross_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Dennis Ross</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Marco_Rubio_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Marco Rubio</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>FL Republican Jr Senator</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/NJ/Jon_Runyan_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jon Runyan</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>New Jersey Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/Steve_Scalise_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Scalise</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>LA Republican challenger</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Bobby_Schilling_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bobby Schilling</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Jean_Schmidt_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Jean Schmidt</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Aaron_Schock_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Aaron Schock</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/David_Schweikert_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">David Schweikert</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Austin_Scott_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Austin Scott</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Rick_Scott_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Rick Scott</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>FL Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Tim_Scott_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tim Scott</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Pete_Sessions_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Pete Sessions</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/John_Shadegg_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Shadegg</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arizona Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Adrian_Smith_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Adrian Smith</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Nebraska Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/TX/Lamar_Smith_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Lamar Smith</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Texas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Steve_Southerland_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Southerland</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Steve_Stivers_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Stivers</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Ohio Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Marlin_Stutzman_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Marlin Stutzman</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/John_Sullivan_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Sullivan</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Oklahoma Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Lee_Terry_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Lee Terry</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Nebraska Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/John_Thune_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">John Thune</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>SD Republican Jr Senator; previously Representative</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Todd_Tiahrt_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Todd Tiahrt</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Kansas Republican (until 2010)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Scott_Tipton_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Scott Tipton</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Colorado Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Fred_Upton_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Fred Upton</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/International/David_Vitter_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">David Vitter</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>LA Republican Jr Senator; previously Representative</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/MI/Tim_Walberg_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Tim Walberg</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Michigan Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/Governor/Scott_Walker_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Scott Walker</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>WI Republican Governor</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IL/Joe_Walsh_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Joe Walsh</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Illinois Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Dan_Webster_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Dan Webster</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/GA/Lynn_Westmoreland_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Lynn Westmoreland</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Georgia Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Roger_Wicker_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Roger Wicker</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Mississippi Republican (Senate 2008)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Joe_Wilson_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Joe Wilson</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>South Carolina Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Steve_Womack_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Steve Womack</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Arkansas Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/FL/Bill_Young_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Bill Young</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Florida Republican</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/IN/Todd_Young_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Todd Young</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Indiana Republican</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2>Independents participating in 10-AFP</h2>

</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Parker_Griffith_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">Parker Griffith</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>Alabama Former GOP (until 2010)</td></tr><tr><td><a href="http://www.ontheissues.org/CA/George_Radanovich_Energy+Oil.htm#10-AFP">George Radanovich</a></td><td>s1s</td><td>California Former GOP (until 2010)</td></tr></tbody></table>

</center>

<h2>Total recorded by On The Issues:</h2>

<table border="1" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><td colspan="3">Democrats: 2

Republicans: 173

Independents: 2</td></tr></tbody></table>

</center>