Boehner’s Funding From Coal up 2,400 Percent

Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/medilldc/5430941803/sizes/o/in/photostream/">Medill DC</a>/Flickr.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The coal industry adores House Speaker John Boehner, now more than ever. From Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:

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 fundraising 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.

That means the coal industry’s now giving Boehner 24 times more the monthly contributions it gave him during 2009-10. Among Boehner’s top current donors is one of the Koch brothers, William, who heads Oxbow Corporation—an energy conglomerate with coal, natural gas, steel, and petroleum operations worth $4 billion in annual sales. In general, the Journal reports, the coal industry has ramped up its political giving since Obama was elected president, more than doubling its 2008 contributions in the latest election cycle, with about 75 percent of donations going to Republicans.

A Boehner spokesman assured the Journal that coal-industry giving constitutes a small fraction of the $30 million or so the speaker has raised for the Republican Party this year. But even if Boehner doesn’t find the coal industry’s givings significant, the spike in coal-backed donations to the House leader hasn’t gone unthanked, either, as the Journal points out, and as we’ve reported here before. Notably, since November 2010 the House has voted to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants and approved a bill that would strip the EPA’s authority to veto water permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers.

All in all, under the current GOP-led House there’ve been some 125 votes to undermine environmental protection, from cutting funding for the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of the Interior, limiting agencies’ authority to enforce the Clean Water Act and blocking the US from contributing to the international governing body on climate change. The legislative attack on environmental protection prompted a backlash from Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who on Monday called the House “the most anti-environment” in history upon releasing a search-and-sortable database of the 125 votes. (MoJo reporter Kate Sheppard has more on this.)

The swell in coal contributions to Boehner secures his place as the industry’s number-two favorite recipient, according data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Oxbow spokesman Brad Goldstein wrapped up the industry’s sentiment for the speaker unabashedly:

We are a big supporter of John Boehner. We think he’s good for business…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.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate