Tag: GOPs

How the House GOP’s investigative tag team navigates the ring

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Republicans are betting the two can pull off a tag team straight out of Jordan’s wrestling days. But Democrats are watching closely, eager to eke out political advantage from any tension points and toe-stepping between the GOP duo.
“We’re communicating. There’s always going to be some overlap, but it’s not a problem right now,” Comer said in a brief interview about their relationship.
Jordan added that he and Comer “work together all the time” including coordinating when the House is in session and talking on the phone when it’s not.
“He can do all the good work he is doing and he can work on some of the same things we’re working on. I don’t care one bit. … I think we make it too complicated. Let’s do our job,” Jordan said.
The duo might appear not to work on paper: Though they vote together most of the time, they’re hardly in lockstep — breaking in recent years on the farm bill and marijuana banking legislation. Notably, Jordan supported Trump-backed challenges to the 2020 election and ignored a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee; Comer has highlighted that he voted to certify President Joe Biden’s win, despite his district going overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020.
And they took significantly different paths to power. Jordan is a former Freedom Caucus chair who saw his stature rise in Washington through his ability to both antagonize and influence House GOP leadership, a bomb-throwing mentality that found favor during the Trump years.
Comer’s ascension through the House GOP ranks was quieter, as he defeated conservative opponents to secure the party’s top spot on the Oversight Committee less than three years ago. But with an extensive political network back in Kentucky, which raises the perennial question of his next planned move, Comer was also no lightweight before taking the gavel.
Comer quipped that Jordan, known for his rapid-fire dialogue, “gets more words per minute in than I do.” And he clarified that he doesn’t see himself as Jordan’s competitor, comparing the Ohioan to fellow Buckeye State native LeBron James while describing himself as “the kid lucky to be on the team.”

“I think it’s good — everybody acts like it’s bad,” Comer said of their relationship. “Maybe I’m a gullible country boy.”
Republicans back him up, however, chalking it up to a case of perceived opposites attracting.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of both the GOP’s panel investigating government politicization and the Oversight Committee, acknowledged they have “very different personalities” but said they are “more effective together.”
“It’s not good cop-bad cop, but it’s hard charging vs. a more laid-back personality,” he said.
Predictably, the investigative buddy act has become a top target for Democrats, the White House and Biden-world allies, who view its ascendance as a sign of how Republicans will use their majority: by training all their firepower on the administration, despite lacking evidence for many of their claims. Democrats are particularly confident that Jordan and Comer’s investigations will create blowback for Republicans in purple and Biden-won districts.
And Biden’s party feels it has plenty of material to work with already.
Though Democrats have long scrapped with Jordan, it’s Comer who has caught early and fierce pushback from his cross-aisle colleagues. The Kentuckian has had a near-constant TV presence, prompting private Democratic questions about whether he’s trying to prove himself to a conservative base that’s already embraced Jordan.
Most recently, Comer sparked days of headlines when he cited the late Beau Biden as an example that the U.S. attorney in Delaware had pulled punches on investigating the Biden family. The White House called Comer’s words “despicable.” The Oversight chair argued that his remarks were being widely mischaracterized and that he never said Biden’s son, who died of cancer, “should be indicted.”
It’s not just Democrats who have criticized Comer’s and Jordan’s approaches. Some GOP pundits have recently questioned the pace of Jordan’s investigations, and Comer’s expansive to-do list has sparked media questions about whether he’s spread himself too thin.
They have set up some clear lines of delineation: Jordan is handling a sweeping investigation into the Justice Department and the FBI, two prime targets for Republicans who grew increasingly antagonistic toward the federal law enforcement agencies during the Trump years. Comer, meanwhile, is digging into the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, hunting for government waste broadly and digging into how trillions of dollars in coronavirus aid were spent.
And true to their respective reputations, Jordan has publicly fired off a series of subpoenas for documents and interviews, while Comer issued his first three subpoenas with little fanfare. And Comer has seemed more willing to dive into subjects that won’t necessarily earn him headlines, like border contracts.
But some lines have only grown blurrier: They’ve held back-to-back hearings on the border, with Comer using his to question administration officials, while Jordan called witnesses critical of the Biden administration. The Ohioan also held a field hearing in Yuma., Ariz., that was boycotted by Democrats, lending itself to more of a political-rally vibe.
And while Comer has publicly talked about the impeachment of Biden officials, he’s careful in the halls of Congress to volley questions back in Jordan’s direction.
Jordan is also a member of the Oversight Committee, a dynamic that staff and colleagues say help the two coordinate their strategy. But it’s a visual reminder of the overlap, with Jordan sitting next to Comer on the dais.
Comer is taking the lead on most Hunter Biden-related investigations, but Jordan’s also probing a letter from former intelligence officials warning that a 2020 New York Post story on the president’s son’s laptop could be disinformation. And the Ohioan questioned why Attorney General Merrick Garland did not appoint a special counsel to look into Hunter Biden, whom DOJ has been investigating for years.
The Oversight chief held a hearing last month with former Twitter officials where Republicans grilled them over the social media company’s decision to temporarily restrict the 2020 article. Jordan, meanwhile, held his second politicized-government hearing Thursday focusing on the “Twitter files” — reports conservatives purport show collusion between the FBI and company executives to quash the Post story.
Comer and Jordan viewed those areas as examples of how they might dig into the same general topic but go at it from different angles. But Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary subpanel, used Thursday’s hearing to spotlight the overlap, noting that “three weeks ago House Oversight had this hearing with actual Twitter executives … and that didn’t go so well for the House Republicans.”
The duo’s GOP colleagues, however, are willing to give them broad leeway — for now — as long as they don’t literally hold the same hearing back-to-back.
“They’re good friends. They talk a lot,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). “If you have two competing hearings doing the same thing, that’s a problem, but I haven’t seen that so far.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 9, 2023
House GOP’s top tax man throws K Street in a tizzy

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“These huge companies that get big tax advantages and have very good trade policies that have allowed them to invest billions in China and overlook Americans while they reap all these tax benefits — that’s something we’re going to be looking into.”
All of that is throwing K Street into a tizzy.
Corporate tax lobbyists are not used to taking heat from Republicans, and many don’t know what to make of Smith.
They didn’t know him well before his surprise win last month for the committee gavel over two more traditional, business-friendly Republicans.
And they’re not sure if this is merely a shift in rhetoric, without much actual change in policy, or if it signifies something deeper. Donald Trump struck a similarly populist note during his 2016 presidential campaign, when he railed against “carried interest.” But, once in office, he made only modest changes to tax policy as part of a largely traditional Republican tax package.
It adds up to a much more ambiguous situation for K Streeters than when Democrats were in charge of the House, pushing a slate of tax hikes on businesses and the rich that left little doubt where they stood.
“People are wondering how best to approach him with corporate issues,” said one former Republican tax aide. “People have spun themselves into a frenzy — but he’s still a Republican.”
The uncertainly comes at a bad time for the business community.

It’s not that there were great expectations that a deeply divided Congress would be able to make big tax changes. But big corporations still want some things addressed, and there will be must-pass legislation this year — dealing with the debt limit, the FAA, aid to farmers — that could also be used to change tax provisions.
Many corporate leaders can’t believe Congress has allowed a series of time-delayed tax increases included in Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts to actually take effect and are still hoping lawmakers will reconsider provisions now making it harder to deduct research, interest and capital expenses.
On top of that, there’s Democrats’ new “book income” minimum tax on big companies, an especially complicated levy that is giving corporate tax departments fits.
Tax payments by big companies are projected to jump this year by 12 percent “largely” because of those increases, budget forecasters said last week.
Smith’s ascent also comes amid a slow-motion break-up between Republicans and big business.
The last time they were running the House, Republicans pushed through the biggest cut in the corporate tax rate in decades.
Since then, they’ve had a major falling out with big business over everything from Trump to state voting restrictions to the 2021 Capitol riots to the rise of socially conscious investing.
For Smith, he says, it’s a question of emphasis.
He’s not anti-business and he’s unlikely to want to raise anyone’s taxes — no one would confuse him with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Asked what part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shouldn’t be extended, Smith doesn’t point to any tax cuts that he thinks ought to lapse — but to Opportunity Zones, which he says should be rewritten to better benefit rural areas.
It’s more that he wants to focus on other things.
Smith, 42, is part of a contingent of younger Republican lawmakers who think it’s better politics for the party to focus on blue-collar workers — something that also happens to fit Smith’s district, a poor area covering the southeast corner of Missouri. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report calls it the sixth-most conservative district in the country. Trump won there last time with 75 percent of the vote.
And Smith emphasizes he’s not a stereotypical Republican.
“I grew up in a working-class family. My mother was a factory worker and my dad was an auto mechanic and a preacher, and I lived in a single-wide trailer for most of my life,” he said. “My background is what drives me and the policies I’m pushing.”
Things like the new corporate minimum tax are the “last” thing he’s focused on, Smith has said.
He’s trying to underscore that by taking the Ways and Means Committee on the road, to the districts of his colleagues. After the first trip, to West Virginia, where lawmakers heard from local small business owners, Smith is planning another hearing next month in Oklahoma City.
“They don’t have lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Yet, he’s not completely ignoring things corporate America would happily support.
Smith said his top priority on taxes is using the code to shore up businesses’ supply chains — something that got a lot of attention during the pandemic and which many Democrats want as well.
“We have to use our tax and trade mechanisms to make sure we help our strategic supply chains,” he said. “We saw over the past couple years that we have a lot of gaps.”
And he says he still supports undoing new restrictions on research and capital expenses. “Some of those issues like accelerated depreciation, R&D — they help a lot of small businesses and they help a lot of American workers.”
Smith also sad he can work with Democrats on the Child Tax Credit — which at least raises the prospect of reviving a deal Democrats proposed last year trading an expansion of that credit for beefed-up business breaks.
Like other Republicans, he is not willing to end work requirements long associated with the credit, as Democrats did temporarily during the pandemic. But “when it comes to looking at a number of increasing it — that’s very negotiable. I want to deliver for working-class families — the tax credit is something that delivers for them.”
He has previously proposed allowing pregnant women to claim the credit, something that many Democrats will not support because of its links to the abortion debate.
Even as he sounds a conciliatory note on the child credit, Smith scorches Democrats on other issues, raising questions about how much bipartisanship might actually be in the offing.
He’s accused the administration of “colluding” with the OECD against the United States with its push for a global minimum tax, for example, and is threatening what would surely be a hugely partisan investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.
As for K Street, many say they are now strategizing over how to win over the committee.
One longtime lobbyist is focusing on other Republican members of the panel — 40 percent of whom joined Ways and Means just last month. The idea is that they will be more receptive, and Smith will have a harder time saying no to them.
“You’re going to have to work other members of Congress even harder,” the lobbyist said, speaking on condition on anonymity.
“He’s not going to ignore members of the committee who come to him and say, ‘We really think you need to do this.’”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 23, 2023
The head of the House GOP’s campaign arm and other members are blasting the improper access of Republican lawmakers’ military records as “beyond disgusting.”

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It’s not certain whether Due Diligence was the only outside entity that obtained access to the military records.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 21, 2023
GOP’s newest attack on Biden’s climate law: China

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To Democrats, such projects and the domestic manufacturing incentives included in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act are the key to creating a homegrown clean energy industry that will end China’s dominance, while weaning the U.S. off fossil fuels. But Republicans contend that the president is recklessly pushing a quick transition away from coal, oil and natural gas — and toward green-energy sources that China dominates.
The GOP strategy plays off anger at China among lawmakers in both parties, which spiked again this month after a suspected Chinese spy balloon wafted across the U.S. before the Air Force shot it down.
“We want to stop the rush to green,” said Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), chair of the Energy and Commerce environment, manufacturing and critical materials subcommittee. Under Biden’s policies, he contended, “Energy costs are going to go higher. Quality of life for the American people is going to go down. America’s economy and energy independence is at stake. Let’s harvest those resources as much as we can here at home.”
Energy experts and members of both parties acknowledge that the U.S. cannot yet make a full break from China, which has had a decade-long head start in developing the supply chain for batteries, solar panels and other clean energy production.
But Democrats say their efforts are directed at replacing Chinese batteries and renewable equipment with U.S.-made parts. They say the attacks from Republicans, who unanimously voted against the climate law, are a transparent attempt to undermine alternatives to fossil fuels.
“Republicans sat on the sidelines while we took these huge steps in the direction of being less dependent on China,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) “So they have no high ground whatsoever on this.”
Supporters of Biden’s policies also warn that an immediate no-China approach would be a recipe for paralysis — slowing the U.S. transition to clean energy, leaving the country without crucial materials, and imperiling the fight to cut planet-warming pollution.
“We can’t make our emissions numbers without solar panels that can only come from China today,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a former environmental lawyer who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

“Being wary of them is really important, but the notion that you can just flush your contact with China is not possible,” he added. “You have to manage China. There’s going to be a period of transition. They are still going to be a very large economy.”
The flight of the balloon has only worsened U.S.-China acrimony. Beijing also temporarily cut off climate talks and other contacts with the U.S. last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, while China’s growing ties to the Russian energy sector have provoked consternation in Washington since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine a year ago.
China’s starring role in clean energy is undeniable, however.
On top of its world-leading position in processing critical minerals and manufacturing solar cells, wafers and modules, China dominates the production of the batteries needed for electric vehicles at every stage of the supply chain, according to a 2022 report from the International Energy Agency.
“We are still in a tight coupling with China, and it isn’t rational or responsible to talk about that relationship like we can turn it off,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research group.
China hosts about three-quarters of the global production capacity for battery cells, along with more than half the global raw material processing of lithium, cobalt and graphite, the IEA said.
Its stranglehold on the polysilicon wafers that turn sunlight into electricity in solar panels is even greater, accounting for 97 percent of the global manufacturing capacity. Lawmakers last year also enacted a federal law that prohibits the importation of goods that include polysilicon from China’s Xinjiang unless an importer can prove the product was not made with forced labor.
Since Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August, companies have announced plans for tens of billions of dollars of green manufacturing projects across the United States, seeking a slice of the law’s $369 billion in incentives for domestically sourced clean energy.
But those projects are also drawing scrutiny from GOP lawmakers. They’ve promised a lengthy oversight process of the green energy spending bonanza bankrolled through the climate law, as well as investments stemming from Biden’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.
“I won’t use the phrase this is the tip of the iceberg, but I would say this is the start of a long and methodical and hopefully sterile process of oversight,” said House Science Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.).
Lucas, and other lawmakers from both parties, have raised questions about China’s influence over a Texas-based battery company, Microvast, which has received initial approval for a $200 million federal grant through the infrastructure law to build a facility in Tennessee.
Microvast is a publicly traded U.S. company with a subsidiary in China, but with no ownership by the Chinese government, said Shane Smith, the company’s chief operating officer. The Energy Department has said no taxpayer funds have gone to the company yet, and that DOE is conducting a due-diligence review of the award.
Smith said the company, which has worked with DOE since the Trump administration, is now being used to score political points — though he acknowledged that some companies with links to China are worth investigating.
“Frankly, we’re just the wrong company,” he said. “Are there companies out there that are blatantly acknowledged that are Chinese-owned, that could get actual federal dollars? Yes. Why are those not the examples in what they’re trying to communicate rather than an American company?”
Conservatives and GOP state lawmakers have also begun drawing links between China and investments in their states. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced last month that he had halted efforts to bring a proposed Ford battery plant to Virginia over concerns about its links to a Chinese company and its technology. The U.S.-based auto giant said Monday that it would locate the project in Michigan instead.
In West Virginia, a Republican state delegate has questioned whether investors in a proposed battery plant there have connections to China and Saudi Arabia.
One solar energy industry executive pointed to conservative ire over a recent announcement that JA Solar, a China-based company that is one of the world’s largest solar manufacturers, will build a factory in Arizona. “The suggestion there is that IRA funds could potentially be going to companies linked to the Communist Party,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the industry’s concerns. The person added, “Our concern is that any link to China is going to be a problem.”
But the person saw a potential bright spot: Because anti-China sentiment on the Hill is bipartisan, an opportunity could exist to channel that energy to advance manufacturing investments — if lawmakers were open to having a meaningful discussion.
Republicans, meanwhile, say Biden’s actions are undermining his stated support for developing domestic sources of critical clean-energy minerals. They point to a recent Interior Department order protecting a swath of lakes and wilderness in Minnesota, which effectively halted a proposed copper mine.
Less than a week later, EPA used a rarely employed veto authority to stop Pebble Mine in Alaska, a contentious metals project that would have extracted significant amounts of copper, gold and molybdenum but risked damaging one of the world’s largest salmon habitats
“The fact they would shut those down demonstrates the phoniness of the conviction of all this, especially with regards to [reducing dependence on] China,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.).
Republicans also warn that Democrats’ subsidies to clean energy developers can’t keep up with China’s government support of its own green industries, and that the U.S. won’t be able to quickly build energy and mining projects unless Congress passes legislation to streamline lengthy permitting reviews.
“You can’t compete with a nonmarket behemoth economy in a game of subsidies,” said George David Banks, a former international climate adviser in the Trump administration who now advises Republicans in Congress. “You can throw all the subsidies and still not be able to solve the problem because you can’t build anything.”
Democrats counter that Republicans have not offered a comprehensive plan of their own. They say the GOP’s focus on boosting domestic mining overlooks other aspects of the supply chain reliant on China, such as processing of metals used in batteries.
And they say the GOP’s emphasis on easing fossil fuel production and exports risks setting back U.S efforts to compete with China.
“[Republicans] need a plan, and the plan needs to be a real plan not a political plan — a nuts and bolts, how do we continue to onshore manufacturing here,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). “And right now we have the only real tool to do that, which is the industrial policy which was embedded in the IRA.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 14, 2023
House GOP’s under-the-radar Hunter Biden problem: DOJ got there first

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In fact, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested in a brief interview with POLITICO that the Justice Department should hold off on issuing any indictment against Hunter Biden so Republicans can complete their probe. He openly acknowledged that criminal charges could hinder his investigation, giving any witnesses in the DOJ case clearance to assert their Fifth Amendment rights.
If the DOJ does go that route, one option would be for the panel to pivot to focus more heavily on other Biden family members, including brothers of the president, the GOP chair said.
“If they indict Hunter Biden, there’s still a lot of stuff out there. And say we can’t touch anything [Hunter-related], it freezes up all the evidence — there’s still a lot of stuff out there,” Comer said.
In calling for the DOJ to delay, Comer said prosecutors had already “waited this long” and Republicans would only “need a matter of months.” But his recommendation is all but guaranteed to fall flat. If the DOJ did listen, it would mirror the sort of unfounded coordination accusations that Republicans have previously lobbed at Democrats.
The DOJ tends to purposely avoid linking its work to Congress’ timeline — a frequent source of frustration for both parties. For example, members of the Jan. 6 select committee routinely groused that the department didn’t appear to be pursuing matters they had uncovered in their inquiry that they believed potentially rose to criminal levels.
Republicans are formally kicking off their investigation into the Biden family this week with their first public hearing tied to the probe, focused on Twitter’s decision to restrict a New York Post story on Hunter Biden just before the 2020 election. (Twitter officials have publicly acknowledged that they view the decision as a mistake.)
As part of the hearing, three former company executives — James Baker, former Twitter deputy general counsel; Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety; and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer — are expected to testify. Comer formally subpoenaed them, but aides said it was meant to give the witnesses legal cover to appear before the panel.
Democrats, meanwhile, are expected to use the hearing to ask their own questions about Twitter’s handling of former President Donald Trump’s controversial tweets. Their witness for the hearing will be Anika Collier Navaroli, a whistleblower who previously spoke with the House’s Jan. 6 committee over the social media platform’s handling of Trump’s tweets.

The former president was banned from the platform in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by his supporters, only to be allowed back on recently by its current owner, Elon Musk.
The hearing serves as Comer’s opener into his larger Biden family investigation, which is expected to take a broad dive that specifically touches on Hunter Biden’s business dealings, bank records and art sales but also spans beyond the First Son. Republicans are hunting for a smoking gun that ties Joe Biden’s decisions to his son’s business agreements, though no evidence has yet emerged linking the two.
POLITICO has not undergone the process to authenticate the Hunter Biden laptop that underpinned the New York Post story, but reporter Ben Schreckinger has confirmed the authenticity of some emails on it. A committee aide described themselves as highly confident that the information gleaned from the laptop was connected to Hunter Biden, but argued that the onus was on skeptics of its veracity to prove that any specific email or document on it isn’t valid.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight Committee, questioned the need for either the DOJ or House GOP investigation, arguing that they were both “based on false premises.” But he also identified the undeniable political pickle that the DOJ’s active investigation would present for Republicans by limiting their requests for information and cooperation from potential witnesses.
“Why not, in some cases, say … ‘we know DOJ is investigating, and we’re gonna wait to hear the results before we do.’ We did that with the Mueller report,” Connolly added.
The DOJ declined to comment for this story. But the department previously outlined how it responds to congressional investigations in a letter last month to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the Judiciary Committee and a member of the Oversight panel.
That letter detailed how the DOJ handles information requests spawning from congressional investigations, effectively warning that it was reserving the right not to cooperate with GOP demands if they’re tied to an ongoing internal matter.
Carlos Uriarte, DOJ’s legislative affairs chief, noted in the letter that “consistent with longstanding policy and practice, any oversight requests must be weighed against the Department’s interests in protecting the integrity of its work.” The DOJ, in accordance with long-standing policy, hasn’t formally confirmed the existence of a Hunter Biden investigation.
Regardless of whether the DOJ ultimately issues any Hunter Biden-related indictments, though, the ongoing federal probe has cast a shadow over Congress’ fight on that front.
Republicans say they are basically in the dark about the tightly held inquiry, which has reportedly gone on for years. And some Democrats view the DOJ probe as a legitimate counterpart to House Republicans, saying it is the proper lane for investigating any of Hunter Biden’s potential missteps.
Hunter Biden and his team are also going on offense, urging the DOJ, Delaware attorney general and IRS to investigate many of the figures who came to possess the files culled from his alleged laptop — and some of the “inconsistencies” in stories about how those various offices came to access the records.
That request from Hunter Biden would require the administration to take up the politically explosive matter at the same time House Republicans are preparing to seek similar information from the same offices. Administration officials have given no indication they plan to do so.
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this story.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 8, 2023
House divided: The megadonor couple battling in the GOP’s civil war

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“Dick is super hard core, and his wife is not so much,” said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh, a past Dick Uihlein ally who was elected in the 2010 conservative wave. Candidates from “the hard right and the tea party and blow it up and burn it down — those were the kind of politicians that Dick always supported. His wife was a bit more establishment. So, they would often disagree on certain candidates.”
The split between the Uihleins — the most powerful donor couple in the GOP, if not all of politics — has come to represent the rift cleaving the Republican Party writ large. While Liz has spent millions of dollars buttressing the party hierarchy, including candidates and super PACs backed by GOP leaders, Dick has invested even more heavily in tearing it down, pouring millions into far-right primary challengers and insurgent groups.
Those close to the Uihleins say they have a warm and affectionate marriage, despite their differences over politics. Friends say their personalities complement one another: She is outgoing and engaging, he more quiet and reserved, and sometimes prickly.
The two worked hand-in-hand to launch a shipping supplies company out of their basement in 1980, starting out selling carton resizers. According to Forbes, the southeastern Wisconsin-based Uline — which now sells goods out of an 800-plus page catalog, with items ranging from beer carriers to butcher paper — brought in $6.2 billion in revenue last year.
The couple’s combined political giving to federal candidates and causes over the last decade tops $230 million, plus tens of millions more to state-level groups, according to campaign finance records. Dick is the more active donor, but Liz has made millions of dollars’ worth of contributions in her own right.
The Uihleins started contributing to candidates in the 1990s, and their diverging views on politics soon showed through.
Dick donated to a pair of far-right candidates during the 1996 Republican primary, Pat Buchanan and Alan Keyes. Liz, meanwhile, later revealed that she voted for Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1992 and 1996 elections.
Their donations began to soar after the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision easing campaign finance restrictions, but the beneficiaries of their largesse were almost immediately at odds. Dick — who has privately complained that Republican leaders give in too easily — funneled vast sums to anti-establishment groups like the anti-tax Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Action, two groups that frequently clashed with party leadership over contested GOP primaries.

Dick would later become the primary funder of Restoration PAC, a super PAC that, according to its website, exists to support “truly conservative candidates, and [oppose] Leftists and the woke agenda.”
Liz, however, focused her giving on mainstream party organizations: During last year’s midterm election, she was a major donor to the RNC, the GOP’s House and Senate campaign arms, and to super PACs aligned with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Those who know the Uihleins — neither of whom responded to requests for comment — say they look for starkly different things when it comes to deciding where to direct their funds. They describe Liz as driven by pragmatism, methodically seeking out the Republican most likely to win.
She has doled out cash to party organizations that protect sitting Republican incumbents, like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund. And Liz is known for maintaining close ties with the party hierarchy. One of her top aides, Tony Povkovich, is serving on the host committee for the 2024 Republican National Convention, to be held in Milwaukee, Wis. According to one person familiar with the discussions, she has offered to financially support the convention.
Liz has also attended RNC finance events, and during the 2016 campaign, then-RNC Chair Reince Priebus tapped her to serve on a fundraising committee benefiting Donald Trump.
Dick, by contrast, is drawn to conservative purists, anti-establishment outsiders and underdogs — some of whom are seen as lost causes.
Over the years, he has been criticized for squandering millions of dollars on failed longshot candidates, including several in 2022, like Illinois gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey and Arkansas Senate hopeful Jake Bequette. He has funded unsuccessful primary challenges against a number of sitting GOP officeholders, including former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman and the late Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.
Dick’s anti-establishment bent has strained his relationship with Republican leaders — many of whom resent him for financing primary challengers against incumbents and for bolstering candidates they contend hurt the party’s prospects. A single seven-figure donation from Dick, senior Republicans complain, can become a serious headache.
Some top Republicans say they don’t bother reaching out to Dick and only work with Liz, though Dick has on occasion cut six-figure checks to the main party committees in Washington.
“She likes to be a much more influential Republican Party donor,” Walsh said. “Dick could give a fuck about any of that.”
Those who’ve interacted with the Uihleins say they make their spending decisions independent from one another, take their meetings with candidates separately and rely on different teams of gatekeepers.
While Liz is known to lean on Povkovich, Dick is advised by a team of hard-edged conservative activists including Dan Proft, a radio show host who waged an unsuccessful 2010 campaign for Illinois governor, and John Tillman, who leads the libertarian-leaning Illinois Policy Institute. Brian Timpone, a former TV reporter who oversees a network of conservative websites, is another key figure in Dick’s orbit.
Candidates pitching Liz must show they have a path to victory. Those appealing to Dick must prove they are true believers.
“They come at it from two different perspectives. Dick is ideological and insurgent-focused, and Liz is just more about issues and about mechanics of the campaign and, ‘How are you going to win?’ and ‘What’s your message?’” said Keith Gilkes, a longtime Wisconsin-based GOP strategist. “They’re completely opposite people in terms of the questions and conversations with candidates.”
That has caused strains at times. According to two people familiar with the discussions, Liz privately expressed anger over her husband’s decision to spend millions of dollars to bolster disgraced ex-Gov. Eric Greitens during last year’s Republican Senate primary in Missouri. Greitens, who stepped down from the governorship after being accused of sexually assaulting his hairdresser, was aggressively opposed in the primary by McConnell’s political operation. Greitens ended up losing the nominating fight.
Walsh recalled that Dick “would often awkwardly laugh about, or talk about, the fact that there’s tension at home because she’s supporting somebody and he’s supporting somebody else.”
Liz appeared to address the divide between her and her husband following the 2020 election, when she wrote a post on her company’s website arguing that families could survive their political differences. Even though she voted for Clinton in the ‘90s, Liz recounted, her marriage “still survived.”
“Family,” she wrote, “still trumps politics.”
Whether the Uihleins — who live in Lake Forest, Ill., about 25 miles south of their company headquarters — clash during the 2024 election remains unclear. Some people familiar with the couple point out that, despite their differences, the two have sometimes overlapped in their support for candidates and causes.
One instance came during the 2016 GOP primary, when both gave millions in support of then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s short-lived presidential bid.
“Both are conservative. They just both have strong opinions on individual candidates,” Walker said. “One of the ones they agreed on was me.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 6, 2023
The House GOP’s investigations: A field guide

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A top priority for Republicans is investigating Hunter Biden, with Joe Biden being the party’s ultimate target of the probe. GOP lawmakers are hunting for a smoking gun that will directly connect the president’s decisions to his son’s business dealings. No evidence has yet emerged to show that the clients taken on by Hunter Biden, who’s been under a years-long federal investigation, affected his father’s decisions as president.
The public phase of the Republican investigation will kick off on Feb. 8, with the Oversight Committee expected to hold a hearing on Twitter and its handling of a 2020 New York Post story on Hunter Biden. Twitter initially restricted users’ ability to share the article, with top officials characterizing the decision as a mistake in the aftermath.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has invited testimony from three former employees — James Baker, former Twitter deputy general counsel; Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety; and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer. A GOP committee aide told POLITICO that they “expect” the former employees to testify. (POLITICO has not undergone the process to authenticate the Hunter Biden laptop that underpinned the New York Post story, but reporter Ben Schreckinger has confirmed the authenticity of some emails on it.)
Beyond that, Comer is re-upping questions to a gallery selling Hunter Biden’s art. The chair is also asking for Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports, or SARs, related to Hunter Biden and his associates. Those records are filed by financial institutions and don’t necessarily suggest wrongdoing but are frequently used as investigative leads.
Comer warned he is willing to subpoena the relevant records after Treasury rejected his initial request, saying it needed to engage in discussions with the committee about the thrust of its investigation.
The Kentuckian has vowed that his committee’s Hunter Biden investigation will be “credible,” but GOP leadership’s decision to name some of the conference’s most conservative members to the committee, including Reps. Scott Perry (Pa.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), is raising fresh skepticism about that among Democrats and their allies.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) warned that the ascension of Oversight panel conservatives would “infect the credibility of the committee,” including on investigations.
Mayorkas and the border
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 30, 2023
Opinion | The GOP’s Strange Budget Strategy

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George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism was an implicit rebuke of Newt Gingrich’s bomb-throwing majorities that tried to balance the budget at all costs. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again populism was a rejection of Paul Ryan’s debt-obsessed majority that hoped to move the goal posts on entitlement reform.
The problem is that Ryan was right about the substance and Trump is right about the politics, and that dilemma — in a nutshell — is why the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is nearly 100 percent and is projected to keep climbing.
Like the ne’er-do-well occasionally convinced to scrub up and show up at church on a Sunday, the GOP experiences spasms of fiscal rectitude, followed by longer bouts of going along with the usual Washington practice of devil-may-care fiscal blowouts.
The party is waging a generational effort … once every 10 years or so. It is showing great staying power … in between the times it barely talks about the issue at all.
It had looked like GOP fiscal hawks had either all molted into big-government populists, or at least were happy to associate themselves with that flock. So it’s been some comfort to anyone concerned about spending that the House Republican backbench has sounded almost indistinguishable from the GOP conference back in the tea party heyday of 2011.
Of course, Republican budget hawks would have more credibility if their passion and commitment didn’t seem contingent on — with some honorable exceptions — a Democrat being in the White House. They obviously could have more influence, if they were gutsy enough to exercise it, over a President Trump or DeSantis than they can ever hope to have over a President Biden.
That said, Republicans never want to spend as much as Democrats do (although they want to cut taxes more), and the dynamic in Washington in recent years meant that if the GOP wanted to relieve depleted defense accounts, they had to give Democrats the non-defense spending that they wanted.
Now, the barely comprehensible levels of pandemic-era spending over the last three years, when Washington has run more than $7 trillion of budget deficits, should be enough to give anyone pause.

As the economist Herb Stein famously said, if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. No one can know how long we can go on with the debt on the current trajectory without baleful consequences — it could be 20 years, it could be 20 months. Prudence suggests that we should avoid finding out.
And that inevitably means squeezing the entitlements that Trump — the party’s past president and perhaps future nominee — says shouldn’t be cut by a penny.
If the federal budget consisted only of discretionary spending, it’d be in decent enough shape.
With some upward jags — the war on terror, the financial crisis — both domestic and defense discretionary spending are down as a percent of GDP from their levels in the 1980s.
As budget maven Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute points out, mandatory spending is where the action is.
In 1965, mandatory spending was 34 percent of total federal spending; in 2022, it was 71 percent. Social Security and Medicare alone are now 34 percent of the budget.
In 2032, Social Security, health entitlements and interest costs are projected to account for 86 percent of the increase in spending over 2008 levels, according to Riedl. The growing Social Security and Medicare shortfalls will account for almost all of the growing deficit over the next 10 years. (The 2017 GOP tax cuts contribute to the projected deficits going forward, but only marginally.)
The scale of the challenge means that Republicans are unlikely to produce any plan to balance the budget in 10 years, certainly not one without huge magic asterisks.
Making some progress against spending this year during the debt ceiling fight would be welcome. But — with a hostile press, a divided party (many Senate Republicans aren’t on board with brinkmanship) and markets that will flip out if the limit isn’t extended on time — the GOP’s expectations for the showdown should be realistic.
Still, the debt limit is a natural point of leverage. Republicans are fooling themselves if they think it’s going to unlock a new era of austerity, but the White House is delusional if it thinks it can refuse to negotiate at all.
Republicans should seek limits on discretionary spending (although it’s tricky because now is not the time to cut back on defense spending during a time of geopolitical challenge from Russia and China); push some technical, not particularly important savings on entitlements; and embrace the TRUST Act that would create bipartisan committees to at least get the conversation going on how to keep Social Security and Medicare from going insolvent and/or overwhelming the budget.
If this seems small beer compared to the Budget Control Act adopted during the debt showdown in 2011, it should be remembered that the law’s caps quickly eroded and then disappeared entirely.
More important than what happens over the next few months is whether the party can nominate and elect a president in 2024 who, unlike Bush or Trump, is in sympathy with the fiscal conservatism of House conservatives.
Even that won’t be a magic bullet, since the public will still need persuading that medium-term changes to Social Security and Medicare don’t represent a clear and present threat to its well-being.
Otherwise, even what a decade or so ago would have seemed an embarrassingly modest goal — keeping the debt at roughly 90 percent of GDP — will be out of reach.
Ronald Reagan quipped that the deficit was big enough to take care of itself. Now, it’s big enough that no single high-stakes battle or act of Congress is going to tame it. Fiscal hawks have to be in for the long haul.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 26, 2023
Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

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Though Cramer isn’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced, his shrug-emoji reaction is widespread among many GOP lawmakers. That has more to do with large-scale political changes than her personally: The more that super PACs, party committees and candidate fundraising have decentralized the party, the less enmeshed Republican lawmakers are in the RNC structure.
As Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) put it on Tuesday: “I don’t know what the RNC does. I really don’t.”
Yet McDaniel’s chilly reception from some Republicans also stems from her mixed record, which includes an eyebrow-raising move to censure two former House Republicans who joined the Jan. 6 committee. With the GOP facing an identity crisis after Donald Trump left the White House, the RNC chair is poised to play a pivotal role in the party’s navigation of an open presidential primary next year. And senior Senate Republicans aren’t exactly clamoring for two more years of McDaniel.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Whip John Thune are both avoiding an endorsement of any candidate in the RNC race. A handful of notable Republican senators do support McDaniel, including Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and her cousin Mitt Romney (Utah), who said that “we don’t always agree on all policies, but I stand with family.”
“She has been so helpful to Iowa, in really fleshing out the first-in-the-nation caucus … she does a great job,” said No. 4 Senate Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa. “She can promote Republican candidates as much as possible and try to hold our party together. But at the end of the day, you have to have candidates that will make their case.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) also signed a letter backing McDaniel. Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for McDaniel’s RNC campaign, said that “Just like the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel’s decision to run for re-election was member-driven.”
“Support for the chairwoman among members and leaders from across the ecosystem has grown since her announcement,” Vaughn said.
But most Republican senators want nothing to do with the RNC race. Several said they didn’t even know when the vote is (it’s Friday).

“I have a lot of things on my plate. That’s not one of them. I wish them all well,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
One thing that unites both McDaniel backers and those who care little about the race is that they don’t see the RNC as primarily accountable for the GOP’s recent election performances. That’s in part because of Trump’s outsized sway since McDaniel took over the national party.
What’s more, the days of Howard Dean’s 50-state DNC strategy or Haley Barbour’s storied reign atop the RNC appear to be in the past. These days, there are major limitations to the level of control either the RNC or the DNC have over the two major political parties.
“If we’re going to blame losing on a national committee chairman, we’ve got problems. They don’t control that much,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)
One reason congressional Republicans aren’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced is that they are uncertain about her challengers. There is no GOP equivalent to Pete Buttigieg, who achieved a level of national-politics wunderkind status by running for DNC chair in 2017.
Mike Lindell, one of McDaniel’s challengers who is colloquially called the “My Pillow Guy” in some GOP quarters, is a known commodity to several Senate Republicans, including Tuberville. But Republicans said they were not sure how serious Lindell is about running.
Harmeet Dhillon, the other challenger to McDaniel, faces a steep path to victory among the RNC’s 168 voting members. On top of that, Senate Republicans said in interviews that they were not particularly familiar with Dhillon or her style of politics.
By contrast, several Republican senators observed that turnout — a key RNC mandate — was high in 2022. And that’s why McDaniel’s boosters are behind her for two more years.
“[McDaniel] knows the system. Our problems in 2022 were multiple. I don’t blame her over anything. Personally, I think continuity is good. We are in a good spot to take back the Senate in 2024, and in the presidential primaries she’s a competent, fair-minded person,” Graham said. “I have confidence in her.”
Even so, Graham is part of an apparent minority of Hill Republicans prepared to publicly stick their necks out for the RNC chair. It is particularly telling that McConnell declined to endorse her; he blanched at the national GOP’s censures of Trump-antagonist former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) last year and was far more bearish than most Republicans on his party’s midterm election prospects.
McConnell’s top deputy, and one of his potential successors, is joining him in the neutral zone.
“I’m not going to wade into that. They’ll figure it out,” Thune said. “I’m guessing whatever I say, if I support someone, it’d probably hurt them.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
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#Senate #GOPs #McDaniel #RNC #caucus #surprisingly #small
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023