Taylor Giorno, OpenSecrets

Joe Manchin vows to block 'radical climate agenda,' rakes in oil and gas industry contributions

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The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a new proposal Thursday to cut greenhouse gas emissions from thousands of power plants burning coal or natural gas, two of the top sources of electricity across the United States. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), criticizing the “radical” proposal, issued his own scorched earth ultimatum on Wednesday ahead of the announcement.

Manchin, chair of the Senate Energy Committee and the top recipient of contributions from the oil and gas industry during the 2022 election cycle, vowed Wednesday to oppose every one of President Joe Biden’s nominees for the EPA “until they halt their government overreach.”

“This Administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” Manchin wrote in a statement released Wednesday.

The EPA proposal would require most fossil fuel-fired power plants to slash their greenhouse emissions by 90% between 2023 and 2040. The EPA projects the emissions reduction would deliver up to $85 billion in climate and health benefits over the next two decades by heading off premature deaths, emergency room visits, asthma attacks, school absences and lost workdays.

Credit: OpenSecrets

“Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people — cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement issued Thursday.

By 2035, the Biden administration aims to shift all electricity in the U.S. to zero-emission sources including wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, Roll Call reported. In a written statement, Manchin warned the administration’s “commitment to their extreme ideology overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security.”

Manchin is up for reelection during the 2024 election cycle, but he has not yet announced whether he will run.

Last month, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) announced his campaign for Manchin’s seat. The Democrat-turned-Republican is among the most popular governors in the country and leads a state former President Donald Trump won by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020.

Manchin has hammered the Biden administration in recent weeks for its implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the president’s signature climate change bill that the Democratic senator was instrumental in shaping.

“Neither the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law nor the IRA gave new authority to regulate power plant emission standards. However, I fear that this Administration’s commitment to their extreme ideology overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security and I will oppose all EPA nominees until they halt their government overreach,” Manchin said in his Wednesday statement.

What Manchin did not disclose in his statement, however, is that the EPA proposal would jeopardize one West Virginia coal facility that’s particularly lucrative for Manchin’s family business, Enersystems Inc., POLITICO reported. Enersystems delivers waste coal to the Grant Town power plant, which was reportedly already struggling financially, troubles that are expected to deepen with the strict new climate proposal.

Manchin personally received $537,000 from Enersystems last year, according to POLITICO’s analysis of personal financial disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate, and he has been paid more than $5 million by the company since he was first elected in 2010. His son, Joe Manchin IV, now runs Enersystems. The Senator’s campaign has also benefited from political contributions from Enersystems, OpenSecrets reported last year.

“This is going to make it harder for them to stay around. You won’t find written anywhere in the rule that this is supposed to be putting coal plants out of business, but just do the math,” Brian Murray, director of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability at Duke University, told POLITICO.

In 2020, Manchin’s home state of West Virginia generated about 90% of its power from coal, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. By contrast, less than 20% of the energy generated nationally comes from coal. Many states, including neighboring Virginia, are phasing out coal by replacing it with natural gas.

While the U.S. may show signs of moving away from coal, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told the Senate Energy Committee earlier this month that the country was not prepared to abandon coal and maintain a reliable energy system.

“Coal is more dependable than gas and yes, we need to keep coal generation available for the foreseeable future,” said Commissioner Mark Christie.

Manchin took another swipe at the EPA on Thursday during an energy committee hearing on permitting reform, when he accused the agency of preventing the development of carbon capture technology by denying companies the permits they need to trap captured carbon underground.

“Don’t tell me that you’re going to invest in carbon capture sequestration when we can’t get a permit to basically sequester the carbon captured,” Manchin said. “This is the game that’s being played. I know it, they know I know it, and we’re not gonna let them get away with it.”

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

Federal lobbying spending tops $1 billion in first quarter of 2023

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First quarter federal lobbying spending blew past $1 billion for the second year in a row, a new OpenSecrets analysis of 2023 federal lobbying disclosures found. The federal budget and appropriations was the most lobbied issue as Congress grappled with the looming debt ceiling crisis, and players in the health sector, which spent more money on federal lobbying last quarter than any other sector, fought to keep cuts to Medicaid off the bargaining table.

During the first quarter of 2022, federal lobbyists reported receiving more than $1 billion in nominal dollars — not adjusted for inflation — for the first time ever in a single quarter. Total federal lobbying spending topped $4.1 billion last year, and first quarter spending sets 2023 on track for another big year.

Congress reopened its doors to the public in January, nearly three years after coronavirus measures restricted lobbyists’ access to lawmakers on the Hill. The 118th Congress got off to a relatively slow start, but lobbyists were nevertheless busy.

The federal budget and appropriations is consistently the most lobbied issue on Capitol Hill, and that remained true during the first three months of 2023, an OpenSecrets analysis of federal lobbying disclosures found.

Source: OpenSecrets

The elephant in the chamber is the ongoing debt ceiling debate. President Joe Biden is pushing to raise the debt ceiling limit without spending cuts or other conditions, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has said the GOP-led U.S. House will not pass “a no-strings-attached debt limit increase.” Despite the escalating tensions, the two men have reportedly not met to discuss the budget or debt ceiling since early February. A timeline for default is as contentious as the path forward: the Treasury Department said a default was possible as soon as June, while the Congressional Budget Office projected it could be as late as September.

House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 last Wednesday, which would increase the debt ceiling to avoid default but cap spending at fiscal year 2022 levels. Future federal spending increases would max out at 1% annually under the bill, which also proposes clawing back unspent COVID-19 relief money, axing Biden’s student debt relief plan, reversing new funding for IRS enforcement and upping work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps. The Limit, Save, Growth Act is unlikely to pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The health sector spends more money on federal lobbying than any other sector, and this year is no exception. Health insurers, companies and associations dominated the top 10 federal lobbying spenders throughout the first three months of 2023 as Congress is making moves to crack down on pharmacy benefit managers and the Inflation Reduction Act enacts prescription drug price reductions. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America released a survey that found three-quarters of their members felt the Inflation Reduction Act led to “significant uncertainty” around research and development planning, which the pharmaceutical industry trade association warned forced companies to reevaluate their investment strategy.

Major health sector players including the AARP, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and individual hospitals and systems paid federal lobbyists to “keep Medicaid off the table during debt ceiling negotiations,” a POLITICO analysis of first quarter federal lobbying disclosures found.

“AARP will fight any cuts to the Social Security and Medicare benefits workers and retirees have paid into and earned,” AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins said in a statement in January.

Financial institutions including Truist and the American Bankers Association, conservative advocacy groups including the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, unions, energy firms and local governments paid lobbyists to advance their interests on the debt ceiling crisis, POLITICO found.

At least 10,933 organizations employed 10,550 federal lobbyists during the first three months of 2023, an OpenSecrets analysis of federal lobbying disclosures found. That’s down from 13,847 organizations and 12,674 lobbyists active in 2022.

The 10 clients that spent the most money on federal lobbying during the first quarter accounted for 8% of all federal lobbying spending during the first three months of 2023.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which advocates for American business interests, spent $19.1 million on federal lobbying during the first quarter of 2023 – more than any other lobbying client. The largest lobbying organization in the country, the Chamber boasts a massive pro-business lobbying portfolio that covers issues including taxes, defense spending, antitrust enforcement and efforts to ban non-compete clauses.

The organization disclosed lobbying on the “debt ceiling/limit” and “budget caps” during the first quarter of 2023, raising the “business community’s concern about the prospect of a historic default that would devastate the U.S. economy” in a press release issued at the end of January.

“The House has now passed a bill addressing the debt limit and the need to control spending. The administration should meet with Congressional leaders without delay to find a path forward to raise the debt ceiling and address runaway deficits,” Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer and executive vice president, said in a press release issued after the Limit, Save, Grow Act passed last Wednesday.

The National Association of Realtors, the largest trade association in the U.S. representing stakeholders in the real estate industry, did not disclose lobbying on the debt ceiling during the first quarter of 2023. The group instead focused on affordable housing, flood insurance program reauthorization, fair housing programs and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, among other issues.

Source: OpenSecrets

Last year, the National Association of Realtors celebrated advocacy “wins” including removing almost a dozen tax increase provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act “through major efforts by NAR and its commercial real estate partners to educate Members of Congress on the unhealthy economic consequences of these proposals,” OpenSecrets previously reported.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Realtors are the top lobbying spenders from 1998 through 2022. They are two of the more than 470 nonprofits tracked by OpenSecrets that elect to use the broader definition of lobbying.

These two lobbying giants employ some of the biggest firms, including Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Invariant. The top 10 lobbying firms raked in 8.8% of the $1 billion spent on federal lobbying in the first three months of 2023.

Three former members of Congress registered to lobby during the first quarter of 2023, including two representatives who retired at the end of the 117th Congress.

Former Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) retired after the 2022 election cycle following nearly three decades in the U.S. House. First elected in 1994, Doyle served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee for more than a decade, championing new technologies and renewable energy sources to address climate change. He’ll continue this work as a government affairs counselor at K&L Gates, which highlighted the “tremendous value” Doyle will bring to these projects in a press release announcing his hiring.

“When I think about this whole Ohio and West Virginia region, the opportunity to support the clean energy and tech fields and replace manufacturing jobs that have been lost, that’s exciting to me,” Doyle told The American Lawyer. “I’m hoping to continue to be a positive force for momentum in the region.”

Doyle is subject to a one-year “cooling off” period before he can lobby his former colleagues on Capitol Hill. But he already lobbied the Department of Energy on “funding for programs for green energy low carbon emissions development projects that include or address energy, poverty, energy equity, public housing development” on behalf of Walnut Capital Management, a Pittsburgh-based property management company, during the first quarter of 2023.

Former Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.), who announced in 2021 that he would not seek reelection during the 2022 cycle, also registered as a lobbyist during the first quarter of 2023. Kind was first elected to the U.S. House in 1996, and he sat on the House Ways and Means Committee, the principal tax-writing committee.

The 13-term congressman was also involved in passage of the Affordable Care Act and other major healthcare legislation passed during his tenure, according to his profile at the lobbying firm Arnold & Porter, where he will continue to tackle tax, trade and healthcare issues as senior policy advisor. Kind is also subject to the one-year cooling off period, but he’s lobbied the Treasury Department on some language included in an OECD tax deal that could mean certain companies could be double taxed. While “the overall impact isn’t that large” since it would impact a small number of companies, Kind told POLITICO, “it’s a serious issue for these multinational ESOPs operating and creating jobs overseas.”

Former Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.) also registered as a lobbyist for the first time since he left Congress a decade ago. Sullivan was first elected to the U.S. House in 2002, but he lost the GOP primary to Tea Party-backed candidate Jim Bridenstine during the 2012 election cycle.

Sullivan is a founding partner at the consulting and lobbying firm SBL Strategies. The former congressman registered this spring to lobby Congress on “re-licensing” issues for Oklahoma’s Grand River Dam Authority and natural gas, environmental and infrastructure policy for the Tulsa-based energy company, Williams Companies.

Senior Researcher Dan Auble contributed to this report.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and news organization tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.

George Santos faces uphill fundraising battle during 2024 reelection bid

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Rep. George Santos (R-NY) announced his reelection campaign last week, ending speculation over whether the embattled congressman would run again after reports that he fabricated his resume and misled voters.

But Santos faces an uphill fundraising battle, as his congressional campaign reported losing money during the first three months of 2023.

The campaign reported refunding $8,353 during the first quarter of the year and raising just $5,333, according to campaign financial disclosures filed earlier this month with the Federal Election Commission.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse report for an incumbent member of Congress,” said Brett Kappel, an elections lawyer who has advised both Democrats and Republicans, told the New York Times in response to the news.

The embattled congressman was also notably excluded from a new joint fundraising committee, Protect the House New York 2024, which was formed to steer money to vulnerable House Republicans in New York. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) saying he would “wait and see” who else jumped into the GOP primary race.

Santos’ campaign, which reported $25,000 on hand at the end of March, raised $3 million during the 2022 election cycle. Santos flipped New York’s 3rd Congressional District during the 2022 election, and his victory helped Republicans secure a slim majority in the U.S. House.

But after a Dec. 19 investigation by the New York Times alleged Santos fabricated most of his resume, he faces investigations by several government authorities for alleged personal or campaign finance malfeasance. Santos voluntarily stepped down from his committee assignments on the Science, Space and Technology Committee and the Small Business Committee before the end of the first month of the 118th Congress.

The Santos campaign spent $3,000 on legal services two days after the New York Times story broke, OpenSecrets previously reported. His campaign’s year-end report painted a more detailed picture of Santos’ campaign spending amid the scandal, including an $8,000 payment towards “outstanding debt” to an Italian restaurant in Queens, than his sparse April quarterly report.

The first quarter fundraising report gives few details about Santos’ activities during his first months in Congress. His campaign reported no spending on travel, lawyers or vendors, the New York Times reported, and only one individual contribution of more than $200, the threshold for the campaigns to list donor names on the FEC reports.

The single individual donor named in Santos’ first quarter report, Sacha Basin, has little digital footprint, POLITICO reported. There is no record of the donor ever contributing more than $200 to a federal candidate prior to Santos, according to OpenSecrets data.

Santos’ campaign appears to have missed a refund from an individual donor, Michael Hastava. Hastava previously told OpenSecrets he received a refund for an “erroneous contribution” of $10,000 – several thousand over the legal individual contribution limit of $2,900 per election during the 2022 cycle – to Santos’ campaign. Hastava said he received a refund through WinRed, but the refund was not reported on Santos’ year-end or April quarterly filings.

A spokesperson for Santos did not return OpenSecrets’ request for comment.

The Santos campaign also reported $715,000 in debts and obligations — to Santos himself. Santos loaned his campaign several hundreds of thousands of dollars during the 2022 election, even though he only reported earning $55,000 in 2020, raising questions about the true source of that money.

In a statement announcing his reelection campaign, Santos did not address the myriad of controversies that have hung over his first few months in Congress. He instead depicted himself as a “fighter” unbeholden to party politics and influence.

“Good isn’t good enough, and I’m not shy about doing what it takes to get the job done,” Santos said.

OpenSecrets is a nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit research and reporting group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.