$889 Million to Kill Unions, Elect President
Charles and David Koch have ramped it up in their efforts to elect a president and members of the Congress and Senate, as well as kill collective bargaining, among other goals. USA Today reports the billionaire brothers plan to spend an astronomical $889 million to fund everything from advertising and data-gathering technology to grass-roots activism, in an all-out effort to elect a like-minded president in 2016.
The news was released to donors attending the annual winter meeting of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which sits at the center of the vast operation funded by the Koch Brothers’ money.
In 2012 alone Freedom Partners spent nearly $240 million funding nearly three dozen organizations, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to smaller Tea Party groups.
Charles and David Koch intend to continue building an operation that could exceed the national political parties in size and scope to help advance their political agenda. The spending, unrivaled for an outside organization, represents more than double the nearly $400 million the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised and spent during the 2012 presidential election cycle.
Charles Koch said the organization would not back down from its ambitions, according to excerpts released over the weekend: “Americans have taken an important step in slowing down the march toward collectivism. But as many of you know, we don’t rest on our laurels. We are already back at work and hard at it.”
Koch said the group’s efforts have been “largely defensive to slow down a government that continues to swell and become more intrusive.”
During last year’s midterm elections, Koch-affiliated groups spent millions in advertising to successfully toss out Democrats from the Senate and put the chamber in Republican control. In all, the Koch network is believed to have spent $290 million to help shape 2014 election results.
“We have never seen this before,” Sheila Krumholz, who runs the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, said of the Kochs’ planned spending, “There is no network akin to this one in terms of its complexity, scope and resources.”
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