On Wednesday, a veritable who's who of business interests wrote to the Senate Armed Services Committee to cheerlead an anticipated amendment from Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Rob Portman (R-OH). Expected during markup of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 Senate defense authorization act, the amendment would prohibit the Department of Defense (DOD) from implementing President Obama's draft executive order (EO) on contractor disclosure, should he sign it.

With dim prospects of passing stand-along legislation, it seems opponents of the president’s draft disclosure EO are throwing everything they have against the wall and hoping something sticks. Republicans have now added anti-disclosure amendments to the FY 2012 House financial services appropriations bill and the House defense authorization bill.

It’s likely that these amendments will be stripped out by the Senate or killed in conference when the two chambers hash out differences between the bills, but opponents hope that by sticking anti-disclosure language in as many bills as possible that one of the amendments might get through.

Of course, any surviving language would have to get past President Obama’s veto pen, but opponents want to force the president to make the tough choice between rejecting an anti-disclosure amendment and implementing an important funding or authorization bill.

In response to Big Business’ note to the Senate Armed Services Committee, OMB Watch sent our own letter voicing strong opposition to the Collins-Portman amendment, observing:

The contractor disclosure draft executive order under consideration by President Obama is a step in the right direction to mitigate the effects of the millions of dollars of political campaign contributions by Big Business that will flood federal elections as a result of the Citizens United decision.

Which, as Ben Freeman explained recently, is why the bevy of trade groups – everyone from the American Frozen Food Institute to the Wyoming Stock Growers Association – signed onto the industry letter: the very same entities that are resisting disclosure have a stake in ensuring that the public is unaware of the undue influence they garner through contributions.

*The Senate Armed Services Committee voted to approve the Collins-Portman amendment and it is now included in the Senate's FY 2012 defense authorization act. However, the committee has yet to release the amendment's final language (we hear changes were made) or the vote tally.

Image by Flickr user rutty used under a Creative Commons license.

On Wednesday evening, during House debate of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 defense authorization bill, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) introduced and won agreement to an amendment that would prevent the federal government from requiring potential contractors – which would include many large corporations – to disclose their political contributions to the public.

The amendment is a direct challenge to the Obama administration's draft executive order (EO) on contractor disclosure, a common sense transparency initiative supported by many small businesses, the good government community, and advocates for campaign finance reform, and rabidly opposed by big business and their agents in Washington.

The amendment passed 261-163, with all but one Republican having voted in the affirmative. Given the conservative makeup of the House, along with the GOP's fidelity to corporate interests and its reflexive responses to most of President Obama's policies, the final vote isn’t surprising.

The amendment's adoption, however, should extinguish any lingering doubts that the House majority’s championing of government transparency is anything but empty rhetoric. It seems House Republicans are for openness only if it has the potential to embarrass or score political points against the Obama administration, and as long as it doesn’t challenge entrenched special interests.

In addition to the entire Republican caucus – sans a very brave Walter Jones Jr. (NC) – 26 Democrats broke ranks to back the Cole anti-transparency amendment – demonstrating that powerful special interests also have their grasp of many within the House minority.

The following members – who have heavy concentrations of federal contractors in their districts, are beholden to business interests in general, or are members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition – should be ashamed of their votes:

As if reading from the same Chamber of Commerce talking point, backers of Cole’s amendment and similar stand-alone legislation recently introduced in Congress uniformly contend they’re trying to prevent the White House from injecting politics into the federal contracting process.

As Sean Parnell of the conservative, let's-allow-unlimited-corporate-money-to-dominate-the-political-process Center for Competitive Politics ridiculously claims: the Cole amendment is a “strong rebuke to the executive branch's effort to bring politics into the federal contracting process and enable the creation of a Nixon-style Enemies List.”

This nonsensical line of reasoning is wrong for two reasons. First, the draft EO says nothing about requiring federal agencies to examine a potential contractor’s political spending. The disclosure is for the benefit of the public and the public alone. Moreover, if there’s a concern about potential abuses, opponents could be arguing for the White House to tweak the EO to make it clearer on this point, resolving any potential concern.

Second, opponents have it backwards: the disclosure EO wouldn’t introduce a pay-to-play scheme in contracting – as it already exists – but would actually help to root it out. Large contractors, like Boeing and General Electric (GE), pool millions of dollars together through political action committees (PAC), and in turn contribute to public officials. These companies don’t selflessly contribute this money; they treat it as an investment and expect a reasonable return.

And the situation has only gotten worse since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year, as even more money is pouring into our campaign system through obscure third party groups.

Of course, plenty of state and local governments have adopted disclosure initiatives similar to the draft EO in an attempt to battle pay-to-play contracting. And those initiatives are paying off. If states are the laboratory of our democracy, then it makes sense to take those policies that states have made work and apply them at the federal level.

*This post has been updated to better reflect the mission of the Center for Competitive Politics (CCP). In response to this post, CCP President Sean Parnell complained that OMB Watch "falsely sez [sic] CCP opposes all disclosure." It was wrong of me to make that claim, because CCP supports the disclosure, as Sean says, of "large contribs [sic] to candidates/parties."

Of course, that's the problem with limited disclosure, especially in a post-Citizens United environment: it does nothing to check the powerful "free speech" (i.e. spending ability) of corporations from running roughshod over the voices of average citizens. Championing limited disclosure, however, does allow an organization like CCP to claim support of "disclosure" all the while attacking any policy that impinges on corporations' ability to determine the outcome of elections.

Image by Flickr user Craig S used under a Creative Commons license.

In the latest issue of The Watcher, OMB Watch discusses (here and here) the recently passed House budget and the many non-budget provisions attached to it, including the anti-environmental riders that prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies from doing this or that. For example, House lawmakers thought it best to approve amendments preventing the EPA from implementing greenhouse gas limits on major carbon polluters or finishing a rule curbing particulate matter pollution.

But just as interesting are some of the riders that were voted down. An amendment that would have limited oil and gas companies’ ability to pillage public resources without paying royalties to the government was rejected. In fact, the vote wasn’t even close, 174-251, with 25 Democrats joining 226 Republicans in voting down the measure.

Royalty waivers are granted to companies in an attempt to incentivize deepwater drilling in the Gulf. (Yes, like the kind BP was conducting at the Deepwater Horizon rig.) However, the waivers were supposed to expire when energy prices rose. “But in a now-infamous and expensive goof, the Department of Interior left the price ceilings out of leases issued in 1998 and 1999, thereby allowing royalty-free production at any oil and natural-gas price,” according to The Hill energy and environment blog.

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), would have attempted to fix the error by essentially prohibiting Interior from spending money to issue new leases to companies enjoying the waiver unless the flaw was corrected.

With oil prices hovering around $100/barrel and companies like Exxon posting big profits, it is ridiculous that 251 representatives would support allowing them to fleece American taxpayers out of billions of dollars more. Of course, unlike us regular folk, Congress will be getting some of that money back in the form of campaign contributions. I wonder if there’s a connection there…

Happy belated birthday to the Clean Air Act which turned 40 on Tuesday, Sept. 14. In honor of the occasion, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson gave a speech touting the many accomplishments of the act. Among them, health and life-saving benefits of gigantic proportions. EPA says that, in the act’s first 20 years alone, clean air programs prevented 205,000 premature deaths and 18 million respiratory illnesses among children.

Jackson also spoke of the Clean Air Act’s impact on the economy. John Broder at the New York Times’ Green blog has a recap:

She said that lobbyists had falsely claimed for years that the measure and the agency’s application of it would shutter factories, kill jobs and cost billions for compliance. But each of these doomsday predictions was proved wrong, she said, asserting that the bill saves tens of thousands of lives each year and returns $40 in health and environmental benefits for every dollar in compliance cost.

“Say what you want about E.P.A.’s business sense,” she told an audience of agency officials, environmental advocates and business lobbyists, “but we certainly know how to get a return on our investment.”

She said the law had not only improved health and cleaned up the nation’s skies, “it has been remarkably effective at proving lobbyists wrong.” 

But as Broder points out, despite the evidence, industry representatives and their allies in Congress continue to pillory the Clean Air Act and assail any attempt to write new clean air regulations. The latest targets have been EPA regulations on climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the lawmakers leading the anti-EPA charge is Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Yesterday in Washington, under clear sunny skies and with air quality readings showing low levels of ozone and particulate matter, Rockefeller criticized EPA in front of a group of coal miners and advocates organized by coal industry lobbying firms. He saved some of his harshest rhetoric specifically for Jackson, according to Congress Daily:

"She doesn't understand the sensitivities of the economies and what unemployment means," Rockefeller told the crowd. "Her job is relatively simple. She just says 'clean everything and keep it clean. Don't do anything to disturb perfection.' You can't do coal and do that at the same time." 

But the Clean Air Act has been successful for 40 years, and we still rely on coal for the majority of our electricity. How does Rockefeller reconcile that?

Furthermore, Based on Jackson’s comments mentioned above, it’s pretty clear that Rockefeller is wrong: Jackson is attuned to economics. Regulation can be good for the economy when it keeps people healthy and saves lives, if for no other reason than healthy, living people are more likely to work, innovate, earn, and spend than sick people, and much more likely than dead people.

It’s clear the health of the overall economy is not a priority for Rockefeller, his many cronies in Congress, and the cadre of industry and anti-regulatory lobbyists lodging tirade after tirade about EPA air and climate standards. They’re perfectly willing to accept a sick economy, and sick people, so long as Big Coal’s bottom line isn’t affected.