A bulldozer moves coal at Foresight Energy's Pond Creek coal mine in Johnson City, Ill., last year. Bloomberg News
Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio has been a longtime supporter of the industry's. Associated Press
By BRODY MULLINS SEPTEMBER 13, 2011
U.S. coal companies have pumped $1.5 million into House Speaker John Boehner's political operation this year, a sign of the industry's beefed-up efforts to fight new and proposed regulations from the Obama administration.
The coal industry now ranks as one of the top sources of cash for the Ohio Republican, rivaling such perennial GOP donors as Wall Street and the real-estate industry. A large part of the coal industry's donations came in a single week at the end of June.
Donations from coal-industry interests account for more than 10% of the $12.5 million Mr. Boehner collected from Jan. 1 to June 30 for fund-raising accounts he directly controls. Mr. Boehner's personal campaign account collected less than $200,000 from the coal industry during the entire 2009-10 election cycle.
The cash flowing to Mr. Boehner's coffers stems partly from the GOP's efforts to roll back the Obama administration's environmental and energy policies since taking control of the House in 2010, and replace them with fewer regulations in order to boost domestic energy production. Republicans say proposals to curb pollution from coal-fired power plants and limit mining threaten to raise energy costs and stifle job-creation. The speaker has long been a backer of the coal industry, and many coal interests are based in his home state of Ohio.
In April, the House voted to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources. In July, the House approved legislation that would limit the EPA's authority to veto water permits previously issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Other measures benefiting the coal industry are still moving through the House, though they have gone nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said the money from the coal industry represented a small fraction of the roughly $30 million the speaker has raised for the Republican Party this year, a total that includes money he has helped raise by headlining fund-raisers for other Republicans or signing his name to fund-raising pitches.
"The speaker is thankful to have generous supporters who share his vision of how a smaller, less costly government can help create a better environment for long-term job growth," Mr. Fritz said.
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmentalist group, said, "The House majority acts like whatever the coal industry wants is good for America."
Just as the coal industry gives predominantly to Republicans, environmental groups tend to support Democrats. In the 2010 election, for example, the League of Conservation Voters spent about $5.5 million on behalf of mostly Democratic candidates for Congress. A recent fund-raising appeal from the group said: "Don't Let Congress Mess With the EPA's Ability to Protect Our Air."
One top donor to Mr. Boehner this year has been William Koch, president of Oxbow Corp., which owns a coal-mining operation. Mr. Koch and his wife contributed a total of $70,000 to Mr. Boehner, according to fund-raising records. Two of Mr. Koch's brothers are well-known Republican contributors.
"We are a big supporter of John Boehner. We think he is good for business," said Brad Goldstein, a spokesman for Oxbow, based in West Palm Beach, Fla. "He looks out for business interests, and he wants to create more jobs for America, while this administration has been rather harsh on the industry."
The National Mining Association, which represents the coal industry, has cheered the House's actions. The group says limiting the EPA's authority to veto water permits will "deliver important benefits to the entire economy by providing certainty" to mining and other industries that need such permits.
The coal industry has ramped up political giving since President Barack Obama's election. In the latest election cycle, the coal industry made a total of $8 million in campaign donations, more than double the $3.5 million it donated during the 2008 campaign, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political giving. About 75% of the donations went to Republicans.
Most of the industry's donations to Mr. Boehner went to a special fund-raising account he established last year that can legally accept donations higher than the normal limits on campaign contributions. Mr. Boehner can use the money for his re-election campaign or donate it directly to other Republican candidates. Donors to Mr. Boehner's personal re-election account can only donate $5,000 during the current election cycle.
Top donors to Mr. Boehner's account include employees of American Electric Power Co. and FirstEnergy Corp., two Ohio-based utilities that rely heavily on coal.
A spokesman for FirstEnergy said the company has been a longtime supporter of Mr. Boehner's. American Electric Power is based in Ohio, said a spokeswoman, "so it makes sense that we would support his campaigns."
Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes another wildly false claim in a new Web ad — saying that the U.S. poverty rate has hit an “all-time high.” In fact, the rate is the highest since 1993, but 7.3 percentage points lower than it was in 1959, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent annual tallys.
Perry’s false claim about the poverty rate follows his false claim during his second debate appearance, when he said Obama’s stimulus measure “created zero jobs” since it was signed in February 2009. That untrue statement was called out not only by us, but other fact-finders as well, including debate cosponsor CNN.
Perry makes much use of the word “zero” in this Internet-only ad, which runs 1 minute 45 seconds. Regarding jobs, he chooses his words more carefully than he did in the debate, saying “zero jobs” materialized — in the single month of August. That’s true enough, according to the most recent official job statistics.
Perry’s ad goes on to say (over pictures of shuttered buildings and empty factories) that Obama’s tenure is marked by “ZERO CONFIDENCE … ZERO ‘HOPE’ … ZERO ‘CHANGE.’ “ We interpret all those as statements of Perry’s opinion, and thus fair game. Anyone is entitled to agree or disagree. And polls show that Americans who say the U.S. is on the “wrong track” outnumber those who think it’s on the “right track” by more than 4 to 1. Plus, consumer confidence — while far from “zero” as measured by the Conference Board — still took a steep plunge in August to the lowest point since 2009.
But Perry’s ad simply gets it wrong about the poverty rate. The Census Bureau said on Sept. 13, when it released the most recent annual figures on poverty and income:
U.S. Census Bureau: The poverty rate in 2010 was the highest since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points.
So the poverty rate is not even close to being the highest in the 51 years for which we have official figures, let alone at an “all-time” high — which would be higher than even during the Great Depression, or the era of slavery.
Perry’s ad may have confused the poverty rate — the percentage of the total population in poverty — with the number in poverty. It’s true that the Census figures show more people in poverty in 2010 than at any time in the previous five decades, and thus a record number. But it’s also true that there are a record number of Americans overall (the population keeps rising every year).
Update, Sept. 21: The Perry campaign also did some creative editing at the beginning of this ad, where Obama is heard saying: “I love these folks who say, well, this is Obama’s economy. That’s fine. Give it to me.” But that’s not exactly the way Obama really put it, though the editing is done so seamlessly that few if any listeners would suspect his remarks had been truncated.
What the president really said — in Michigan on July 14, 2009, after GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy — was this (with portions deleted by Perry campaign in bold):
Obama, July 14, 2009: I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, well, this is Obama’s economy. That’s fine. Give it to me.
What the Perry campaign edited out was Obama’s reference to those in Perry’s party whom he accused of helping to create “this mess.”
At another point in the ad, the president is heard saying: “Despite all the naysayers who were predicting failure a year ago, our economy is growing again.” But what’s not apparent from the ad is that Obama said that in May 2010, a few days after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the economy had added 290,000 new jobs the month before (later revised downward slightly to 277,000). But listeners might get the idea that the president said it recently.
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