American voters have long shown a willingness to elect very wealthy presidents, as long as they demonstrated a real concern about people on the economic rungs far below. Given what the last few weeks have revealed about Mitt Romney’s wealth, and how he made it, you would think he would want to go out of his way to show that concern.
He actually said, live on CNN, that “I’m not concerned about the very poor.”
With his interviewer, Soledad O’Brien, looking stunned, Mr. Romney explained that the poor have their government safety net, which he would be willing to repair if broken. But he plans to leave it to the Democrats to care about their needs.
“We will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor,” he said. “And there’s no question it’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor. But my campaign is focused on middle Americans. You can choose where to focus, you can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle income Americans, retirees living on Social Security, people who can’t find work.”
As it happens, many of the people in the last two categories have become quite poor since the downturn began, relying on the same government safety net in which Mr. Romney seems to have little interest. Last September, the Census Bureau said there were 46.2 million people living in poverty. That’s 15 percent of the American people.
Statistics aside, at a time when voters have expressed a strong concern about economic inequality, it was a remarkably tone-deaf statement for the Republican front-runner to make. He had previously made it quite clear that his proposed budget cuts would destroy or damage many programs for the poor, but that’s still a long way from a man worth $250 million actually saying out loud that he is not interested in the struggles of those with nothing.
Mitt Romney led all presidential rivals in contributions from financial services industry firms and workers in 2011, followed by President Obama, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum.
By Jennifer Liberto @CNNMoney February 1, 2012: 3:42 PM ET
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Wall Street has thrown its weight behind alum Mitt Romney for president, according to new campaign data for 2011.
But the industry hasn't totally abandoned President Obama, who in 2008 raised more money from the financial industry than any other candidate in history, according to two watchdog groups.
No other candidate came close to the $12 million Romney's campaign raised directly in 2011 from individuals who work at financial firms and banks, which also includes cash from insurance and real estate companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
By comparison, Obama's campaign raised $5 million from people who worked on Wall Street last year, the Center for Responsive Politics reported.
"Romney has raised, far and away, more money,"said Michael Beckel, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "But the president is still collecting a big chunk of change from finance sector interests."
In addition to Romney's campaign, Wall Street executives opened their wallets to Restore Our Future, a super political action committee that supports Romney indirectly.
It raised about $18 million from July through December 2011, federal records show, with contributions coming from people throughout the industry -- from workers at Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, to Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), federal records show.
Romney's big victory in Tuesday's Florida Republican primary was helped by the so-called super PAC. That group paid the tab for negative political advertisements against his main opponent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
High-profile donors to the pro-Romney super PAC include hedge fund managers who each contributed a million dollars: John Paulson of Paulson & Co., Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies Corp., Julian Robertson of Tiger Management and Paul Singer of Elliott Management.
That Romney should be popular on Wall Street is no surprise, considering his long career in finance, which includedcreating Bain Capital in 1984. The financial sector contributed more than one in five dollars of the $56 million raised by Romney in 2011, according to the center.
Romney's list of top contributors reads like a who's who of Wall Street: Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Group (CS), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), Barclays, (BCS) Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) are all represented on the list. Romney got $496,430 from those associated with Goldman, $317,400 from those who work at JPMorgan and $277,850 from those with links to Morgan Stanley.
When asked about the Wall Street donors, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said: "To the extent anyone is supporting Mitt Romney over President Obama, it is because the state of the economy and the president's failure to create jobs."
Obama has also racked up contributions from big banks, despite his anti-Wall Street rhetoric and his role in creating the largest set of regulatory reforms of the financial sector since the 1930s. Yet, Obama's take from financial firms accounted for just 4% of his overall $125 million war chest through Dec. 31.
The giving from big Wall Street firms was smaller to Obama than to Romney, such as $64,224 from individuals who work at Goldman Sachs, the only financial firm to make a list of top 20 contributors to Obama.
Thanks to his 2008 campaign, the president just barely holds the record for raising the most from the financial sector than any other federal candidate in the past 20 years, according to research by the Sunlight Foundation.
Obama went on to campaign against Wall Street, dubbing its denizens "fat cats" early in his presidency, while trying to get reforms passed. Last year, the president proposed the so-called Buffett rule, a guideline to ensure that millionaires pay a higher percentage of their income in federal taxes than those who make less.
Requests for comment to the Obama campaign were not returned.
Other candidates Wall Street supported in 2011 included former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, with $460,173 raised, Rep. Ron Paul, with $317,524, and former Sen. Rick Santorum with $232,700.
Government watchdog groups said they're concerned about all the money flowing in from Wall Street.
Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for Common Cause, a nonpartisan political advocacy group, says she expects this general election to be the most expensive race ever, fueled in large part with Wall Street giving.
"They're giving a lot of money, and when industries and individuals are giving a lot of money to a candidate, it's because they want something in return," she said.
G.O.P. Donors Showing Thirst to Oust Obama in November
Mitt Romney won substantial backing from a small number of his party's most influential and wealthy patrons. Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Interactive Graphic Who’s Financing the ‘Super PACs’ The Times tracked donors to “super PACs” as they filed reports on Tuesday detailing their activities in the final three months of 2011. Unlike candidates, who can raise a maximum of $2,500 per person for each election, super PACs are independent from candidates and can raise unlimited amounts from individuals, corporations and labor unions, and spend unlimited amounts to support or oppose a candidate. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/31/us/politics/super-pac-donors.html
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL LUO Published: January 31, 2012
Close to 60 corporations and wealthy individuals gave checks of $100,000 or more to a “super PAC” supporting Mitt Romney in the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses, according to documents released on Tuesday, underwriting a $17 million blitz of advertising that has swamped his Republican rivals in the early primary states.
The filings to the Federal Election Commission, the first detailed look at a crucial source of support for Mr. Romney, showed his ability to win substantial backing from a small number of his party’s most influential and wealthy patrons, each contributing to the super PAC far more than the $2,500 check each could legally write to his campaign.
All told, the group, Restore Our Future, raised about $18 million from just 200 donors in the second half of 2011.
Millions of dollars came from financial industry executives, including Mr. Romney’s former colleagues at Bain Capital, who contributed a total of $750,000; senior executives at Goldman Sachs, who contributed $385,000; and some of the most prominent and politically active Republicans in the hedge fund world, three of whom gave $1 million each: Robert Mercer of Renaissance Technologies; Paul Singer of Elliott Management, and Julian Robertson of Tiger Management.
Harlan Crow, the Texas construction magnate, gave $300,000 personally and through his company. William Koch, whose brothers Charles and David are among the country’s most prominent backers of conservative causes, gave $1 million personally or through Oxbow Carbon, the energy company he founded. Members of the Walton family, founders of the Walmart chain, gave over $200,000, while Bob Perry — a wealthy home builder who has long been the top patron of Mr. Romney’s erstwhile rival, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas — chipped in $500,000 in early December.
But as Mr. Romney sailed to an overwhelming victory in Florida’s primary on Tuesday night, fund-raising documents filed by President Obama showed the kind of financial juggernaut he will face if he becomes his party’s nominee: Mr. Obama reported raising a total of $140 million in 2011, far eclipsing the $57 million Mr. Romney raised for his campaign for the year.
The figures underscored the deep divide between how each party’s presidential contenders are financing their early bids for the White House: Mr. Obama exploiting the well-oiled machinery of an incumbent with a powerful grass-roots apparatus and hundreds of “bundlers” gathering checks of up to $2,500 per person from friends and associates, and his Republican opponents relying far more heavily on independent groups empowered by court decisions that have made it easier for wealthy individuals and corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to intervene directly in election contests.
Newt Gingrich raised nearly $10 million in the final three months of 2011, and his spokesman, R. C. Hammond, said in a Twitter message that Mr. Gingrich had raised an additional $5 million in January, capitalizing on strong debate performances and the collapse of other Republican candidates.
But those amounts also reveal how dependent Mr. Gingrich has become on a single donor: Sheldon Adelson, a wealthy casino owner who, along with his wife, Miriam, put $10 million into a pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, in January.
Until the Adelsons’ checks arrived in January, Winning Our Future had collected just $2 million, according to the filings. Its large donors included Sivan Ochshorn, Mrs. Adelson’s youngest daughter, who contributed $500,000 to the PAC in late December. The pro-Gingrich PAC also collected a $500,000 contribution from Harold Simmons, a Texas billionaire and major conservative donor, as well as another $500,000 donation from W. S. Propst, an Alabama businessman.
Over all, the leading Republican independent expenditure groups raised more than four times as much money as their Democratic counterparts in the first phase of the 2012 campaign, underscoring the intense thirst of major Republican donors to turn Mr. Obama out of the White House and win control of the Senate next year. The two biggest Republican independent expenditure groups, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, raised a total of $51 million through Dec. 31. Restore Our Future and super PACs backing Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Perry raised roughly $38 million more.
A coalition of four Democratic groups — including Priorities USA, founded last year by former Obama aides — raised just $19 million combined, though that imbalance is likely to shift as the Republican nomination battle draws to a close and Democratic donors tune more closely into the campaign.
Last year “was a year for organizing and establishing our groups as the Republicans did irreparable harm to their candidates and their brand,” the Democratic groups said in a joint statement. “In 2012, we will be the countervailing force to Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Mitt Romney’s billionaire friends who would love nothing more than to drive a right-wing agenda that benefits the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.”
The filings also revealed how recent court decisions have opened new avenues for corporate contributions into campaign politics, and how narrow the gap has become between the candidates and the theoretically independent super PACs that are backing them.
Four contributions of $250,000 to Mr. Romney’s super PAC came from affiliates of Melaleuca, an Idaho-based company that manufactures skin and nutritional products. The company’s president and chief executive, Frank VanderSloot, is a national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign and a fellow graduate of Brigham Young University.
Some of the group’s other donors have co-hosted fund-raisers for Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign, including William Koch; Lewis M. Eisenberg, an executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts; and Stephen Ross, a wealthy New York real estate executive. One of the Goldman executives who donated to Restore Our Future, Jim Donovan, is the same person who handles the Romney family’s considerable investments with the firm, which total as much as $36.7 million.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Obama voluntarily disclosed the names of nearly 90 new individuals and couples, known as bundlers, whom he has recruited to raise money for his campaign from friends, business associates and family members.
No Republican candidate has disclosed the names of his or her bundlers beyond those who are registered lobbyists, the only category they are required to disclose by law. Mr. Romney, reflecting his emergence as the choice of many major Republican donors and elected officials, had considerable fund-raising help from Washington lobbyists, who raised $1.2 million for him in the fourth quarter of last year, according to his filings.
Rick Santorum, who campaigned across Iowa in a pickup truck, limped into that state’s caucuses with more debt than cash in the bank, his filings showed on Tuesday, and still edged out Mr. Romney for first place.
But while he has raised $4.2 million more this month, according to a spokesman, Mr. Santorum, like Mr. Gingrich, is now heavily dependent on outside help: the Red White and Blue Fund, a super PAC heavily financed by Foster Friess, a wealthy mutual fund executive, that has spent close to $2 million to date on advertising to support Mr. Santorum.
The earliest candidates to file were those already vanquished: Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Mr. Perry and Tim Pawlenty.
Mrs. Bachmann briefly vaulted into the top tier of Republican presidential candidates after winning an Iowa straw poll in August. But she continually struggled to raise money, taking in just $1.7 million from the end of September through the closing hours of 2011, the vast majority of it in small checks.
Mrs. Bachmann ended the year with about $1 million in debt, including $159,641 owed to her campaign manager’s consulting company, thousands of dollars in travel reimbursements and a $3,000 bill listed as “golf cart expenses.”
Derek Willis and Griff Palmer contributed reporting.
Conservative group Club for Growth hits Mitt Romney for minimum wage stance
(Credit: CBS)
By Leigh Ann Caldwell February 1, 2012 9:40 PM
The influential conservative group Club for Growth PAC criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's position on the minimum wage, calling it "disappointing."
"Indexing the minimum wage would be an absolute job killer," Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said. "Mitt Romney's proposal is anti-growth and would harm our economy. It's disappointing to hear that the leading candidate for the Republican nomination believes that the government can set the price of labor better than the free market."
Club for Growth's critique was made after a reporter asked Romney aboard his campaign plane Wednesday if he still believed the minimum wage should be indexed to account for inflation, essentially increasing the minimum wage each year to keep up with the cost of living.
Romney failed to expound on his position, but said he has "the same thoughts as in the past." Since he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney has said he supports automatic hikes in the minimum wage.
Romney's position differs from Gingrich's. At a campaign event on January 10th, Gingrich was asked by a member of the audience if he agreed with Romney's position. Gingrich said, "No, and I'm surprised that's his position."
The federal minimum wage was implemented at the tail end of the Great Depression in 1938. It has been increased periodically through out the years and not without political fights in Congress. Some Republicans are opposed to a minimum wage at all because it is a government mandate, and many oppose increasing it, saying it is harmful to businesses.
The last time Congress authorized an increase to the minimum wage was in 2007, raising it from $4.25 to its current rate of $7.25 per hour in 2009.
Club for Growth supports conservative candidates that meet its strict bar of low-tax, free-market beliefs. It has not endorsed a candidate this presidential election and usually focuses its attention on congressional races, but Communications Director Barney Keller did not rule out the organization getting involved in this presidential election.
Romney's position "is kind of anathema to what we stand for," Keller said.
Romney's campaign has not responded to requests for comment.
"I don't know how religious Buffett or Gates and others of their own charitable ilk are" - As it should be - whatever it is/is not, you can bet it's sincere...NEVER TRUST ANYONE WHO WEARS RELIGION ON THE SLEEVE.
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