Granger, kay Rep 6%

Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX-12)

LCV

12 24

Experts stunned by report of GOP rep allegedly found in dementia facility - Alternet.org

Poor climate change voting record

Voted in support of S.J. Res. 24, a "resolution of disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act that would nullify the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan—the first nation-wide limit on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and key climate change policy.

[League of Conservation Voters]

guk ref 2

no lnx

ENVIRONMENT

JUL 25, 2023

Amid Heat Wave, GOP Adds Climate Denial To Spending Bills

House Republicans are helping their fossil fuel donors with legislative fine print that would block climate action.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook

David Sirota

House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger, R-Texas, speaks with House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

As scientists warn of a mass extinction and ecological tipping points, congressional Republicans are helping their fossil fuel industry donors by quietly inserting provisions into annual spending bills designed to bar the American government from combating and researching climate change, according to the fine print of legislative text reviewed by The Lever. Some provisions also require the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil and gas development, while potentially limiting such leases for wind power.

In all, Republican leaders have added at least a dozen such environmental provisions to four annual government spending bills as property damage and death tolls mount from historic heat waves, floods, and wildfires.

By adding the provisions to annual must-pass spending bills, Republicans who control the U.S. House are attempting to force Senate Democrats to choose between either accepting them or blocking the spending bills and shutting down the government.

For his part, President Joe Biden has declined to issue a climate emergency declaration, which could provide his administration new authority to circumvent at least some of the Republicans’ tactics.

The GOP bills are currently in the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Texas RepublicanRep. Kay Granger, who has received nearly $1.2 million from the oil and gas sectorover the course of her career in Congress. Her second-largest career campaign contributor is the oil and gas industry, andshe brags on her government website that she has fought to prevent spending to combat climate change.

Granger’s congressional district has been grappling with a heat-related public health crisis.

Blocking Fisheries Research As Oceans Boil

One of the most aggressive Republican climate provisions moving through Granger’s panel is buried in legislation funding the government’s science agencies. As waters around South Florida set records for the hottest ocean temperatures ever recorded, a line in the bill would bar the Biden administration from spending any money on “climate change fisheries research.”

The move comes just weeks after tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore in Texas due to high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, following other recent mass die-offs in Australia. The Center for Biological Diversity notes that intensifying ocean acidification triggered by climate change “could disrupt the entire marine ecosystem.”

The subcommittee that originally authored the fisheries legislation is headed by Republican Rep. Hal Rogers,who hails from the coal-rich state of Kentucky and whose top career campaign contributors include donors from the mining and fossil fuel industries.

Rogers has raised more than half a million dollars from the mining industry over the course of his career, and $390,000 from the oil and gas industry, according to data from OpenSecrets. In the 2019-2020 cycle, Rogers’s campaign paid $66,000 to his wife Cynthia.

The science funding bill also zeroes out funding for the U.S. Global Change Research Program at the National Science Foundation, which coordinates research across the federal government “to understand the human-caused and natural processes that influence our planet,” and would additionally block the government from using any funds to carry out climate-related Biden executive orders.

The bill targets a Biden order issued in January 2021 that directed the federal government to use the procurement process, in which it acquires goods and services from the private sector, to mitigate carbon emissions as part of a broader federal effort to address climate change.

The order also specifically directed the Commerce Department to “to collect input from fishermen, regional ocean councils, fishery management councils, scientists, and other stakeholders on how to make fisheries and protected resources more resilient to climate change, including changes in management and conservation measures, and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research.”

The GOP legislation also moves to defund a separate Biden order from April 2022 that sought to enhance the federal government’s forest stewardship and promote “climate-smart stewardship of mature and old-growth forests.”

Requiring Offshore Oil/Gas Leases, Slowing Wind Power Leases

The Republican spending bills contain several more efforts to undermine the Biden administration’s ability to meaningfully respond to the worsening global climate crisis.

That includes the bill authorizing funding for the Department of Interior, which oversees public lands. The legislation contains a provision mandating, “None of the funds made available by this act may be used to consider or incorporate thesocial cost of carbon.” The bill also permanently rescinds $1.3 billion in grant funding under the Clean Air Act to mitigate the effects of air pollution, as more than a quarter of all Americans now live in areas with dangerous levels of such pollution.

The Interior spending bill also includes provisions requiring “the Secretary of the Interior to conduct quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales” as well as fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the bill report

At the same time, the legislation bars the government from issuing leases for offshore wind development in Florida until the completion of a study about windmills’ impact “on military readiness and training, marine environment and ecology, tourism, and other uses of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

The latter rider is in response to Florida Republican lawmakers’ complaint that “people travel from around the world to see our pristine beaches — not windmills.”

The Department of Interior funding bill has been spearheaded by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Id.), who has received nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions from electric utility interests during the course of his career, as well as roughly $440,000 from oil and gas industry donors. In the last few years, climate-intensified wildfires have caused billions of damage in Simpson’s state.

Defunding Global Climate Investments

Then there’s the bill funding the Department of State and foreign aid. That legislation would bar funding for theGreen Climate Fund— one of the entities charged with fulfilling the mandates of the Paris Climate Accords — which received a $1 billion deposit from the Biden administration in April.

Likewise, the bill prohibits the federal government from financing the Clean Technology Fund, which helps developing countries transition away from dirtier energy sources, and also explicitly rejects the concept of climate reparations, decreeing that none of the funds may be used “to pay compensation to any country, organization, or individual for loss and damages attributed to climate change.”

The bill also prevents the funding of an August 2021 Department of Treasuring guidance calling on multilateral development banks like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to limit financing of fossil fuel projects.

The State Department and foreign aid bill is being overseen by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has received nearly $430,000 in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resources industry during his time in office. His district includes locales that a recent climate study said are among the most likely to soon be underwater due to rising ocean levels.

The House bill for funding the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), meanwhile, seeks to bar the agency’s proposed climate disclosure rule, which would mandate that publicly traded companies provide a full disclosure of their climate risks.

The subcommittee overseeing the SEC bill is headed by Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) who has received more than $175,000 from oil and gas interests during his career. Womack’s home state has recently experienced deadly tornadoes and flash flood warnings.

Finally, the GOP bill funding the Department of Labor will maintain a ban from 1976 that has been reapproved annually under both Republican and Democratic control of Congress that bars the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from investigating deaths at farms that employ less than 10 people, including deaths related to extreme heat. (Due to mass automation in the agriculture industry, this exemption includes many farms that are quite large and profitable.)

While OSHA has yet to issue a standard governing excessive heat in the workplace, the agency is tasked with investigating deaths or injuries in cases of extreme heat. At least 436 people died from extreme heat on the job from 2011 to 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The OSHA bill originated in a subcommittee headed byRep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), whose top career campaign contributors include donors from agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry. Nearly a quarter of the Alabama labor force is outdoor workers, and the state recently experienced temperatures above 100 degrees.

The bills will now move to the full House for approval, and then the final bills must be negotiated with the Senate and passed again through both houses of Congress. If the provisions are kept in the text and Biden vetoes the spending bills, parts of the federal government could shut down.

---

LNX lever

...The GOP bills are currently in the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who has received nearly $1.2 million from the oil and gas sector over the course of her career in Congress. Her second-largest career campaign contributor is the oil and gas industry, and she brags on her government website that she has fought to prevent spending to combat climate change.

Granger’s congressional district has been grappling with a heat-related public health crisis.

Blocking Fisheries Research As Oceans Boil

The subcommittee that originally authored the fisheries legislation is headed by Republican Rep. Hal Rogers, who hails from the coal-rich state of Kentucky and whose top career campaign contributors include donors from the mining and fossil fuel industries.

requiring Offshore Oil/Gas Leases, Slowing Wind Power Leases

The Republican spending bills contain several more efforts to undermine the Biden administration’s ability to meaningfully respond to the worsening global climate crisis.

That includes the bill authorizing funding for the Department of Interior, which oversees public lands. The legislation contains a provision mandating, “None of the funds made available by this act may be used to consider or incorporate the social cost of carbon.” The bill also permanently rescinds $1.3 billion in grant funding under the Clean Air Act to mitigate the effects of air pollution, as more than a quarter of all Americans now live in areas with dangerous levels of such pollution.

At the same time, the legislation bars the government from issuing leases for offshore wind development in Florida until the completion of a study about windmills’ impact “on military readiness and training, marine environment and ecology, tourism, and other uses of the Outer Continental Shelf.”

The latter rider is in response to Florida Republican lawmakers’ complaint that “people travel from around the world to see our pristine beaches — not windmills.”

defunding Global Climate Investments

Then there’s the bill funding the Department of State and foreign aid. That legislation would bar funding for the Green Climate Fund — one of the entities charged with fulfilling the mandates of the Paris Climate Accords — which received a $1 billion deposit from the Biden administration in April.

The State Department and foreign aid bill is being overseen by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), who has received nearly $430,000 in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resources industry during his time in office. His district includes locales that a recent climate study said are among the most likely to soon be underwater due to rising ocean levels.

Finally, the GOP bill funding the Department of Labor will maintain a ban from 1976 that has been reapproved annually under both Republican and Democratic control of Congress that bars the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from investigating deaths at farms that employ less than 10 people, including deaths related to extreme heat. (Due to mass automation in the agriculture industry, this exemption includes many farms that are quite large and profitable.)

The OSHA bill originated in a subcommittee headed by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), whose top career campaign contributors include donors from agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry. Nearly a quarter of the Alabama labor force is outdoor workers, and the state recently experienced temperatures above 100 degrees.

[[

AHA yikes RR nostalgia gipper, but massive dereg now under cover of?

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/28/global_heat_climate_crisis_july_2023

...

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS: Well, I mean, the short answer is, to limit all of these impacts, we need to reduce carbon emissions very rapidly. And while we have had an incredibly impressive renewable rollout over the last couple of years, all of the graphs are pointing way up. The next decade looks much more promising for renewable energy than most advocates even believed was possible just a few years ago. Nevertheless, they’ve barely dented, if they’ve dented at all, the emissions that we’re producing from fossil fuel generation. So we haven’t actually reduced the share of global power production that comes from fossil fuels from this remarkable renewable rollout. We’re just using those renewables to add to our power capacity.

And that’s really, you know, the change that we need to make. We need to be producing so much renewables now that we can actually draw down fossil fuels, and draw them down relatively rapidly, rather than simply using them to supplement our consumption patterns and power production. And unfortunately, we haven’t really seen a sign of that. At best, it looks like we’re going to be looking at sort of a plateau for emissions over the rest of this decade. And we know from all of the scientific warnings that that’s simply inadequate if we have any hope of meeting some of our more ambitious climate targets.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, David, I want to ask you about what would be the most effective legislation in the United States to deal with climate change. But, Dharna Noor, I wanted to first go to your piece. If you can explain what Project 2025 is and what you found in your investigation?

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, Project 2025 is, essentially, a group of dozens of right-wing organizations. We’re talking about think tanks, publications and the like. And it was convened by the Heritage Foundation, which is, I think, in the climate world, very well known for promoting climate denial for decades, and for even longer promoting this sort of anti-regulatory stance. So, these groups came together in an attempt, essentially, to advise whoever the next president is, if that person is a Republican, so any Republican who takes office in next year’s presidential election.

This is the second time that the Heritage Foundation has led the creation of a sort of transition plan aimed at a Republican president. In the early ’80s, we saw the Heritage Foundation create one of these plans, that actually went on to have a huge influence on the Reagan administration and was framed as a sort of way of taking on the out-of-control regulatory state.

And in this particular iteration, there’s a lot of focus in their new transition plan on unmaking environmental regulations. I’m happy to talk more about this, but there’s a number of previous Trump appointees who have written, essentially, proposals to undo the many powers of the federal administration, from the EPA to the Department of the Interior, all in an attempt to sort of lessen the federal authority to regulate fossil fuels and, essentially, to boost those polluting industries.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. Polls show now that Biden and Trump, even though he was indicted again yesterday, are neck and neck in the polls for president. You talk about the Department of the Interior part of the plan, in this 2025 plan, being written byWilliam Perry Pendley.You note he controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations. Talk more specifically, and name names.

DHARNA NOOR: Absolutely. So, as you mentioned, William Perry Pendley very controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump, controversially because he was actually never confirmed by the Senate. This was the case for a number of Trump appointees. And he also was known, before he had a role in the Trump administration, for writing this book called Sagebrush Rebel, that was really in praise of Ronald Reagan, of Ronald Reagan’s anti-regulatory sort of agenda. It’s, I think, unsurprising to see his name in a sort of proposal that’s aimed at, you know, ending the ability for federal regulations to have any real impact on the environment.

Previous reporting from E&E News, from Scott Waldman there, found that Mandy Gunasekara had written another chapter focused on remaking theEPA, really focused on shrinking its authority both by laying off staff, by cutting budgets, with an especially big focus on sort of cutting environmental programs, like environmental justice programming and public outreach programming.

Another name that was in the proposal was Bernard McNamee, who wrote a chapter on the Department of Energy, again sort of in an attempt to say we should shrink the authority of the Department of Energy. He previously served as an adviser to Ted Cruz. And before that, he led this far-right organization called the Texas Public Policy Institute — or,Texas Public Policy Foundation, rather, that really aims to undo environmental regulation and fight renewable energy at the state level.

And so, we’re really seeing, I think, a who’s who of the far right in this attempt to, you know, not only sort of be in the next president’s ear if they’re a Republican, but also, you know, sort of recommend personnel and say, “Hey, here’s who you should staff up with.”

AMY GOODMAN: What role does billionaire Charles Koch play in this project, Dharna?

DHARNA NOOR: So, the Heritage Foundation, who, again, are the far-right foundation that sort of convened this group, Project 2025, has historically had ties, financial ties, to the Koch brothers, who are, of course, billionaires who made their fortune in fossil fuels and related industries. The Heritage Foundation is also a member of the State Policy Network, which is a sort of coalition of these extreme right-wing groups that have targeted regulation, especially climate-focused regulation, in states for many years. And I think, you know, I would just say, I guess, it’s no surprise that an organization with ties to people who have made such a great fortune in the industries that must be regulated in order to take on the climate crisis, you know, have historically been tied to a group that is trying to push that agenda to the presidential level.

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, I wanted to ask David Wallace-Wells to respond to what Dharna is describing right now, and also talk about what needs exactly to be done. I mean, we’re speaking today, the day after the Supreme Court has just OK’d, cleared the way for construction of the contested Mountain Valley Pipeline to resume, lifting a halt on a section of the project that had been issued by a lower court earlier this month after a challenge by environmental groups.

...

ref

GUK

https://yyytheguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president

‘Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president

Rightwing groups penned a conservative wish list of proposals for the next conservative Dharna Noor

Thu 27 Jul 2023

An alliance of rightwing groups has crafted an extensive presidential proposal to bolster the planet-heating oil and gas industry and hamstring the energy transition, it has emerged.

Against a backdrop of record-breaking heat and floods this year, the $22m endeavor, Project 2025, was convened by the notorious rightwing, climate-denying thinktank the Heritage Foundation, which has ties to fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch.

[A burned-out car against a background of charred trees and hills

Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show

Read more]

Called the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, it is meant to guide the first 180 days of presidency for an incoming Republican president. Climate experts and advocates criticized planning that would dismantle US climate policy.

The nearly 1,000-page transition guide was written by more than 350 rightwingers and is full of sweeping recommendations to deconstruct all sectors of the federal government– – including environmental policy.

“Heritage is convening the conservative movement behind the policies to ensure that the next president has the right policy and personnel necessary to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people,” the foundation’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in an April statement.

The guide’s chapter on the US Department of Energy proposes eliminating three agency offices that are crucial for the energy transition, and also calls to slash funding to the agency’s grid deployment office in an effort to stymie renewable energy deployment, E&E News reported this week.

The plan, which would hugelyexpand gas infrastructure,was authored byBernard McNamee, a former official at the agency. McNamee was also a Trump appointee to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He previously led the far-right Texas Public Policy Foundation, which fights environmental regulation, and served as a senior adviser to the Republican senator Ted Cruz.

Another chapter focuses on gutting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and moving it away from its focus on the climate crisis. It proposes cutting the agency’s environmental justice and public engagement functions, while shrinking it as a whole by terminating new hires in “low-value programs”, E&E News reported. The proposal was written Mandy Gunasekara, who was the former chief of staff at the EPA under Trump.

The guide also features a chapter on the Department of the Interior written by William Perry Pendley, who controversially led the Bureau of Land Management under President Trump and worked to eliminate drilling regulations.

[Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections

David Shadburn of the League of Conservation Voters]

Before his time in the Trump administration, Pendley headed the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm where he advocated for selling off public lands. He also authored a book, Sagebrush Rebel, praising Reagan’s anti-regulatory policies.

“He did a bunch of terrible things,” saidKert Davies, director of special investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity, about Pendley’s time at the Department of the Interior. “He worked to dismantle [the Bureau of Land Management] while he was in it.”

The Heritage Foundation has enjoyed a longstanding influence in GOP politics, even helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency, authors Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway detail in their 2023 book, The Big Myth. Many of Reagan’s policy proposals were cribbed from the pages of the thinktank’s first Mandate for Leadership, published in 1980, which asserted that the US was in the middle of a “crisis of overregulation”.

“It doesn’t trouble me that any individual or institution would develop advisory plans for politicians. What troubles me is the Heritage Foundation’s long history … of working to undermine environmental protection at the expense of health and wellbeing of the American people, at the expense of life on Earth,” said Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard.

[Protesters in October 2021 demanding that the Biden administration to do more to curb climate change and ban fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, House GOP members are also continuing to attack federal climate funding in their spending bill proposals, putting governmental functions at risk.

Earlier this month, the Clean Budget Coalition– – composed of more than 250 advocacy groups – warned that Republican representatives were slipping restrictions on climate spending into the government’s annual spending bills, bills that must be passed before current funding expires on 30 September to avoid a government shutdown. This week, the coalition found that House Republicans had added additional “poison pills” to spending bills, including ones that target environmental funding.

The spending bills are currently in the House appropriations committee, which is chaired by theTexas Republican Kay Granger, who is a top recipient of campaign funding from the oil and gas industry, the Lever reported this week. They will go to a full vote in the House, and then the finalized proposals will move into negotiations with the Senate. If Biden vetoes them, a government shutdown could be on the way.

“Republicans in Congress continue to show they will stop at nothing to undermine environmental protections and attack anything that would help addressing the climate crisis,” said David Shadburn, a senior government affairs advocate at the League of Conservation Voters.

Some of the provisions would hamstring the EPA’s powers, blocking the agency from enforcing new pollution limits on power plants and tailpipe emissions or from implementing controls on mercury and other toxic air pollution, and effectively shuttering a critical program for deploying carbon-free energy.

“House appropriations Republicans are abusing the appropriations process to impose a cycle of environmental injustice,” said Deanna Noël, climate campaigns director for the consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen.

Other “poison pills” would prohibit listing the dunes sagebrush lizard under the Endangered Species Act, remove protections for the greater Yellowstone ecosystem’s population of grizzly bears, and bar the Department of the Interior from creating a working group to help restore bison populations. Still others wouldrequire the energy secretary to sell 1m barrels of refined petroleum from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and block the implementation of a rule forcing federal defense contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and create emission reductions plans.

These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry

Deanna Noël of Public Citizen

Every GOP representative can submit proposals to the House appropriations committee, and since no member is required to sign off on specific proposals, it is not clear who exactly is responsible for each “poison pill”. But as the Lever reported, many Republican representatives who have effectively championed the provisions are recipients of funding from polluting industries.

For instance, a proposal to halt climate-related fisheries research funding was written by a subcommittee led by Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky, whose top campaign contributors include mining and fossil fuel interests. Another proposal would bar funding for theUN’s Green Climate Fund; it was buried in a bill being overseen by major energy funding recipient Representative Mario Díaz-Balartof Florida, the Lever reported.

“These disgraceful poison pill riders are nothing short of corporate giveaways to the corrupt fossil fuel industry,” said Noël.

The proposals come as waters off the Florida coast reach levels of heat more commonly found in hot tubs, and as much of the nation continues to swelter under triple-digit temperatures.

...

his speech to Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump — who has repeatedly said he wants to build up American military dominance — announced that he’s “sending Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the defense sequester and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.”

Indeed, the White House plans to recommend a $54 billion hike in defense spending, a boost of about 10 percent from current levels.

That’s not too shabby a return on investment, considering that the defense sector spent less than $29 million on political contributions in the last election cycle. Only $315,000 went to Trump, but the donations were heavily weighted toward Republicans, as they have been for the last several cycles.

Of course, defense‘s $29 million in contributions pales in comparison to, say, the financial sector, which is stuffed with deep-pocketed financial firms and individuals who have reaped riches from gambling on the markets; they injected upwards of $1 billion into the accounts of candidates, parties, outside spending groups and other committees in 2016. Two companies — Renaissance Technologies and Paloma Partners — each contributed more than the entire defense sector, mainly through ultra-wealthy partners at the firms.

If defense interests spent relatively little on political contributions, however, that doesn’t mean that they did an inadequate job pursuing their goals. While White House budgets are sometimes considered little more than amusing suggestions by Congress, which controls the purse strings, the industry has fierce defenders on Capitol Hill.

“In Congress, it’s never about the magnitude of the money as much as it is about the strategic placement of your contributions,” said Meredith McGehee, chief of policy at Issue One.

The top heavyweights in the field — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — have consistently demonstrated that truth. Since 2009, they’ve accounted for about 40 percent of the defense sector’s political contributions, having given candidates a total of over $42 million. In the 2016 cycle, they contributed almost $12 million, or 41 percent of the sector’s overall giving.

These companies, like other defense firms, primarily target two types of recipients: Those who serve on the House or Senate Armed Services committees, and those who are on the Appropriations panels, the latter of which oversee bills allocating government spending.

Lawmakers who sat on the Armed Services committees in the 114th Congress received a combined total of almost $4.5 million from those four companies, led by Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) at roughly $185,000. (Note that figures for senators in this post include funds given over their six-year terms; House cycles are two years. Also, they don’t include Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), as he ran for president; his White House campaign received more than than $244,000 in gifts from the quartet of defense giants.)

Overall, defense, through both PACs and individuals associated with companies in the sector, gave members of the Armed Services panels almost $10 million dollars in contributions. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the chair of the House’s committee, netted nearly $394,000 — the most money from the sector of any member of Congress. He even bested all of last year’s presidential candidates except Hillary Clinton (over $1 million) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) (almost $418,000).

Lawmakers on Appropriations panels were on the welcoming end of $8 million. Overall, defense interests gave members of the Appropriations and Armed Services committees in both chambers close to $18 million in contributions, or more than 62 percent of their total federal giving.

Top congressional recipients of defense money in the 2016 cycle

....

very one of the top 15 recipients of defense money in the 2016 cycle sat on an Armed Services or Appropriations committee.

Bill Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy, described that phenomenon.

“A lot of members on Armed Services committees get on them because they have a military base or a major contractor in their districts,” he said. “They want to keep the money flowing to the companies in their state or district, and contractors sweeten the deal by giving them huge contributions.”

For lawmakers, the situation is a win-win: They get money from defense contractors, and they gain the loyalty of their constituents by bringing or keeping jobs. Defense scratches their backs, and they scratch back. But that relationship can shift priorities away from streamlining the government’s defense budget.

“Probably the most egregious thing they’ll do is they’ll add money for weapons that the Pentagon hasn’t even asked for, like the M1 tank which is being built in Ohio. So you can have liberal Democrats like Sherrod Brown lobbying for more tanks because they’re in their states,” he said.

Since 2009, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has received $10,005 from General Dynamics, which manufactures the M1 Abrams tank in Lima, Ohio.

“It gets even a little bit worse because they have this process that’s logrolling: You vote for the system in my state, and I’ll vote for the system in your state,” continued Hartung. “Then high levels of spending get locked in, including on things that we don’t need.”

It’s therefore unlikely that defense companies are alone in cheering on Trump’s spending plans; plenty of lawmakers have reason to rejoice, too. Never mind that, in Hartung’s words, “spending on weapons is the least effective way to create jobs of any form of government spending.”

“If you’re sitting in a district and your choice is a military contract or no military contract, you would want that,” he said. “But if Trump actually had a comprehensive economic strategy to create jobs across the country, he wouldn’t have to fall back on pumping money into weapons.”

Tanks and jets and guns, oh my!

Trump has said a great deal about the beleaguered F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, developed by Lockheed Martin. The F-35 program has had myriad problems, ranging from exorbitant costs to delays to unreliable machinery. (Hartung called it “junk.”) Luckily for Lockheed Martin, the F-35 has found a friend in the House’s Joint Strike Fighter Caucus. The bipartisan group, according to its initial announcement, stands by the F-35 — despite its issues — because of both national security and the high-skilled jobs it has created.

Caucus members have also, naturally, attracted the spending of the defense sector.

On Oct. 4, 2016, 70 representatives signed a letter to the leadership of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee urging continued support for the program. In the 2016 cycle, those 70 lawmakers received nearly $3.5 million from the defense sector; Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), who was one of the caucus’ two founders, topped the group with more than $271,000. Only one signer — Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) — did not get defense money last cycle.

The median contribution received by all House candidates from the defense sector in the 2016 cycle was $10,000; the median for the caucus letter’s signers was nearly $31,000.

Lockheed Martin, the F-35’s builder, was Granger’s top overall donor, at $125,000 — and she was the company’s top congressional recipient. The F-35 is manufactured in Fort Worth, Texas, in Granger’s congressional district.

Letter-signers collectively received a total of almost $578,000 from Lockheed Martin in the 2016 cycle, nearly 17 percent of their defense dollars. But no one got remotely as much in contributions as Granger did; in second place was Rep. Robert Wittman (R-Va.), who received less than $13,000.

Granger’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Tanks and jets aren’t built on contributions alone, though; for that reason, defense puts juice into its lobbying, and spent almost $127 million in the 2016 cycle. The sector lobbied predominantly on authorization and appropriations acts, which makes sense: That legislation influences the budgets of the mammoth Defense and Energy departments, which give out and oversee billions in defense contracts.

More significant than lobbying spending is the fact that, among the Center for Responsive Politics’ sector categories (like finance, health and labor), defense has the highest percentage of lobbyists who are revolvers: former federal employees who take on lobbying work. With 62 percent of federally-registered defense lobbyists having entered through the revolving door, the sector exerts vast influence on Congress.

And then there are the shadow lobbyists, like Trump’s nominee for Air Force secretary, former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.). Wilsonhas consulted for nuclear weapons labs, including one owned by Lockheed Martin. Over the course of the lawmaker’s six-term career, Lockheed Martin made almost $141,000 in contributions to her; the company, including individuals associated with it, was her largest donor.

Earlier this month, Trump’s choices for Army and Navy secretaries, Vincent Viola and Philip Bilden, respectively, withdrew their nominations due to their personal financial entanglements.