Presidential Pipeline: Bush's top fund-raisers see spoils of victory

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05352/624259.stm

By Jim Tankersley, Joshua Boak and Christopher D. Kirkpatrick, The Toledo Blade
Sunday, December 18, 2005

President Bush's corporate champions see the spoils of his administration in coal. And timber. And credit-card payments, Afghan electric lines, Japanese bank transfers and fake crab.

America's business leaders supplied more than $75 million to return Mr. Bush to the White House last year -- and he has paid dividends.

Bush administration policies, grand and obscure, have financially benefited companies or lobbying clients tied to at least 200 of the president's largest campaign fund-raisers, a Toledo Blade investigation has found. Dozens more stand to gain from Bush-backed initiatives that recently passed or await congressional approval.

The investigation included targeted tax breaks, regulatory changes, pro-business legislation, high-profile salaried appointments, and federal contracts.

Mr. Bush's policies often followed specific requests from his 548 "Pioneers" and "Rangers," who each raised at least $100,000 or $200,000 for his 2004 re-election. The help to business fund-raisers sometimes came at the expense of consumers or public health concerns.

The beneficiaries span industries and the nation. Examples include:

Timber barons who pay lower tax rates on logging sales and face fewer barriers to harvesting trees in national forests because of administrative changes and laws Mr. Bush signed.

Energy producers who dodged potential legal fees and cleanup costs after federal officials revised clean-air standards.

Heads of stock brokerages and other multinational firms, which, under a special tax incentive in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, are bringing hundreds of millions of dollars they earned or stored abroad back into the United States this year at reduced rates.

Executives of defense contractors United Technologies and The Washington Group, which won contracts potentially totaling more than $6 billion to supply American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and rebuild both countries' infrastructure. The same contractors won far less government work under President Bill Clinton.

Mining executives who tapped new veins of coal, thanks to administrative rule changes that opened swaths of hills and forests to their backhoes and left once-protected streams vulnerable to pollution.

With rare exception -- such as a California Pioneer recently implicated in a congressional bribery scandal -- the Bush supporters' benefits appear to come through legal channels of lobbying, rule-making, and legislation.

But a federal investigation of Ohio Pioneer Tom Noe, indicted in October on charges he laundered money into the president's campaign, has focused attention on Mr. Bush's network of elite fund-raisers, who accounted for at least 28 percent of Mr. Bush's $271.8 million in individual contributions for the 2004 campaign.

A Blade investigation beginning in April led to accusations by state officials that Mr. Noe stole millions of dollars the state invested in his rare-coin funds. The probe also brought the money-laundering allegations against Mr. Noe to light.

A Blade report in October showed Ohio's 30 Pioneers and Rangers have secured more than $1.2 billion from taxpayers since 2001 for their companies and lobbying clients.

All of the Pioneers and Rangers who agreed to talk to the Blade for this series said they supported Mr. Bush's ideology and style of governance and said they expected no reward but his victory.

"I was pleased he was a candidate. I liked what his father had done," said Herbert Boeckmann, a California Bush Pioneer who owns the world's largest Ford dealership. "He was a little bit of maverick, but he recognized the key was to get the job done."

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee said Mr. Bush has helped the country add 4.4 million jobs since May, 2003.

"The president's pro-growth economic policies have helped small business, families, and first-time home buyers," said the spokesman, Aaron McLear.

Some experts agree. Martin Regalia, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Mr. Bush embraces traditional pro-business policies, such as lowering taxes and lessening government regulations.

"When you look at the overall economy, it's doing very well with solid GDP growth and low core rates of inflation," Mr. Regalia said. "Part of the reason, certainly, is his policies."

Politics and policy
Mr. Bush is hardly the first president to help supporters financially.

William McKinley doled government jobs to his backers after winning the 1896 presidential election. Mr. Clinton raised tariffs on soap and batteries imported from Europe as retaliation for tariffs that continent levied against the South American bananas of a Clinton supporter, Cincinnati's Carl Lindner, who later became a Bush Ranger.

In his 2004 presidential bid, Sen. John Kerry called for a 36 percent hike in the federal minimum wage, a policy supported by the AFL-CIO, a labor union whose members contributed heavily to the Democrat's failed presidential campaign.

Campaign-finance analysts question whether Mr. Bush's system of recognizing top fund-raisers -- as opposed to donors who cannot give more than $2,000 per election cycle to a presidential candidate -- provides corporate leaders with special treatment.

Steve Weisman, associate director for policy at the Campaign Finance Institute in Washington, said election law does not require candidates to reveal any details about their fund-raising networks.

"Right now, what we know is what the campaigns tell us," he said. "Shouldn't we disclose the people who get credit for arranging for these donations? Isn't there a problem that they might have some undue influence on the recipient?"

End Part I