* Seventy-three percent, or $9.2 million, of the $12.8 million in contributions received by Blunt’s political committees since 1999 have come from business PACs and from lobbyists who very often control the PACs. Capitol Hill lobbyists have made personal contributions of at least $429,000 since 1999.
* Forty-three percent – 13 of 30 – of Blunt’s biggest contributors have hired his former aides as their lobbyists.
* Blunt and congressional candidates for whom he has paid airfare have taken at least 140 subsidized flights on corporate jets since 2001. Blunt personally flew on at least 99 of the flights. His political committees have reimbursed the jets’ owners $193,744 for the trips, which represents the cost of first class plane tickets. Public Citizen estimates the actual costs of leasing these jets at the more expensive charter rate was, depending on the method, between $925,000 and $2 million. Blunt’s reimbursements were often dwarfed by the companies’ campaign contributions to him – essentially making the trips free.
* PACs run by the "Baby Bells" – the local phone providers that descended from the breakup of AT&T, have contributed nearly $540,000 to his campaigns since 1999. Blunt co-sponsored a bill to exempt the companies from sharing lines with competitors, and he co-signed a letter to the Federal Communications Commission demanding the agency justify a rule requiring the Bells to lease portions of networks to competitors. Similarly, Blunt played a leading role in securing a highly inflated $15 billion airline bailout bill after the Sept. 11 attacks and a $3.8 billion bailout two years later; four airline companies contributed $102,000 in cash, including what appear in campaign finance records to be 16 free flights.
* DeLay facilitated Blunt’s rapid rise and Blunt tapped into DeLay’s enormous fundraising machine, especially the Alexander Strategy Group (ASG), founded by former DeLay staff. Ten of Blunt’s biggest contributors have hired ASG as their lobbying firm. Blunt’s committees paid ASG $485,485 since 1999 for fundraising and consulting services. ASG’s clients, meanwhile, have funneled $581,866 into Blunt’s committees. ASG was forced to shut its doors in January 2006 because of its connections with the DeLay-Abramoff lobbying scandal. Moreover, at least one of Blunt’s PACs operated out of the same townhouse as an illegal soft money operation connected to DeLay operatives.
* Blunt provided access to Abramoff and his employees in connection with the NorthernMarianasIslands, which hired Abramoff to block U.S. labor standards from being imposed on the U.S. territory. Blunt also wrote three letters to the Interior Department on behalf of the Louisiana Coushatta tribe, an Abramoff client, opposing a rival tribe’s efforts to open a casino. Blunt dined free at Abramoff’s now-defunct restaurant, Signatures.
http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=2111
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
