Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has founded several businesses, including a for-profit health care firm called the “Center for Health Transformation” (CHT) and a communications firm called the “Gingrich Group.” CHT serves approximately 94 health industry corporations and lobby groups, including health insurance (BlueCross BlueShield Association, WellPoint, AHIP, UnitedHealth), health IT (L-3 Enterprise, Microsoft, IBM), and pharmaceutical companies — with each paying up to $200,000 annually. And although CHT has no registered lobbyists or lobbyists on retainer, Gingrich has used his CHT business to promote his clients’ interests in Congress:

– Gingrich Meets With Lawmakers To Help Craft Specific Policy, Legislation: In March 2009, Gingrich met with Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) and other members of the GOP Doctors Caucus to help write conservative health reform alternative legislation. “Gingrich provided us with great insight as we work to craft health care solutions for the 21st Century,” proclaimed Gingrey after the meeting. As FireDogLake has reported, through his CHT firm, Gingrich wrote healthcare legislation introduced by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA). Gingrich’s CHT also “consulted” with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) on health reform legislation that would deregulate the insurance industry. As the American Spectator reported, the Coburn-Ryan bill also contained the exact health IT proposals backed by Gingrich.

– Gingrich Helps Clients Obtain Specific Financial Opportunities From Legislation: As Business Week reported, Gingrich and his CHT firm worked with health IT firms like IBM and Microsoft “on how to grab some of the $19.6 billion in federal stimulus money.” The article notes that Gingrich helps “open doors” on Capitol Hill for his business clients.

– Gingrich Advises Lawmakers On Legislative Strategy: According to the New York Times, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) discusses strategy on a “regular basis” with Gingrich. Throughout 2009, Gingrich attended whip meetings with the GOP caucus to “educate” rank and file Republican lawmakers on the health reform debate. Gingrich provides “Newtgrams” — constant e-mails and messages with tactical advice — to a vast array of Republican legislators in both the House and Senate. By helping the GOP kill health reform, Gingrich is also assisting his health insurance clients, which all oppose reform.

– Gingrich Coordinates Meetings Between Corporate Clients, Public Officials: In December 2009, Gingrich met with Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and industry partners to discuss potential Wall Street investments in health IT. A health IT trade magazine has noted that since 2007, Gingrich has worked to pair business leaders with influential lawmakers and government officials to promote health IT programs. In March 2009, Gingrich organized a conference to create an “innovative business matchmaking framework” between Israeli telehealth firms, American health insurance and health technology companies, and Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine.

At a CHT press conference on Monday promoting tort reform (CHT clients include medical malpractice consulting firms for doctors), Gingrich attacked President Obama’s health proposals for lacking a supposed “rhythm of transparency.” In the spirit of this transparency, ThinkProgress asked Gingrich why he has not registered as a lobbyist to provide greater clarity on who exactly is paying him to lobby on legislative issues, especially given the influence of his ideas. Gingrich dodged and explained that he is not a lobbyist because when he lobbies Congress, he does so at the request of lawmakers every time. According to lobbying guidelines, lobbying members of Congress counts as lobbying regardless if it necessarily benefits each client. Nevertheless, Gingrich defended his actions by stating that his lobbying is not technically lobbying because it “benefits the country at large.” Watch it:

At the event, CHT Vice President David Merritt told ThinkProgress that Gingrich has “flipped the trade association model really on its head” by pushing an agenda, then inviting clients who support that agenda to “sign on.” Merritt said that it is “very true” that corporate clients pay Gingrich because his agenda benefits them. However, like Gingrich, Merritt explained that Gingrich’s lobbying never benefits individual clients, thus disqualifying Gingrich as a lobbyist.

However, trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce or AHIP also do not necessarily lobby for individual members. Instead, they lobby for policies that benefit groups of members or the industry as a whole. AHIP, the Chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers and other trade associations largely follow the law and register their own lobbyists, as well as lobbyists they contract out. Since Gingrich’s CHT is essentially a health industry trade association, the same rules should apply to Gingrich.

As ThinkProgress reported, Gingrich has been working closely with the oil industry through another project he leads. In his ubiquitous punditry, Gingrich touts himself as an author, a “futurist,” a conservative thinker — anything but a lobbyist. But as the evidence shows, he has positioned himself as a nexus between corporate clients and mostly Republican lawmakers. For the sake of transparency, Gingrich should register as a lobbyist pursuant to the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

After repeatedly blocking an extension of unemployment benefits last night — telling Democrats “tough sh*t” and whining about being forced to miss a college basketball game — Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) returned to the Senate floor this morning to once again object to a motion to move the extension forward.

Last night, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) supported Bunning, saying that “everybody in the country now knows that the senator from Kentucky has a hold on this bill…That’s something that we honor in this body.” And today it was Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) turn to justify Bunning’s obstruction. Cornyn said that he admires Bunning’s stand because “if there is one message that I hear from my constituents in Texas and from people around the country it is ‘stop the spending‘ and be responsible when it comes to these unmet liabilities”:

I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky, Senator Bunning. It’s not fun to be accused of having no compassion for the people who are out of work, the people for who these benefits should be forthcoming, and I believe will be forthcoming. But somebody has to stand up, finally, and say enough is enough, no more inter-generational theft from our children and grandchildren by not meeting our responsibilities today. And that’s what I interpret him to have done.

Watch it:

Cornyn said that he wants to redirect money from the economic stimulus package into the jobless benefit extension, which would cause money already dedicated to tax cuts and other stimulus programs to be revoked. Democrats want to consider the benefits extension emergency spending instead. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) even agreed to hold a vote on Bunning’s suggested options for paying for the extension, but Bunning refused because he “did not expect his colleagues to adopt it.”

The House passed an extension on a voice vote last night (meaning no one objected to the measure), and today Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) criticized Bunning’s obstructionism. “It is really hard to understand why one senator in the United States Senate is holding up the extension of unemployment insurance at this time,” she said. Vice President Joe Biden also weighed in, saying “I wish that senator would think about how that man or woman [whose benefits expire] would explain to their kids how they’re going to get by.”

The Senate adjourned today without the extension passing, and is not scheduled to return until Monday. 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in March, and 5 million will lose their benefits by June if no extension is put into place.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed an extension of unemployment benefits on a voice vote. The Senate, however, has yet to act on the same measure, as various senators are throwing up procedural roadblocks. On Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) asked for unanimous consent to approve an extension, only to see the motion blocked by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) over “a dispute over how [the bill] should be funded.”

Late last night, Democrats made repeated attempts to pass the extension by unanimous consent, and Bunning blocked them all. He then complained that the Democrats’ insistence on trying to ensure that unemployment benefits not expire had caused him to miss a college basketball game:

I want to assure the people that have, heh, watched this thing until quarter of twelve — and I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9 o’clock, and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina, since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year — all of these things that we have talked about and all the provisions that have been discussed, the unemployment benefits, all these things. If we’d have taken the longer version of the job bill…we wouldn’t have spent three hours plus telling everybody in the United States of America that Senator Bunning doesn’t give a damn about the people that are on unemployment.

(Bunning’s beloved Kentucky Wildcats went on to defeat South Carolina.) Watch it:

At one point, while Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) were asking him to relent, Bunning was overhead blurting out “tough sh*t” as he sat in the back row.

Not only did Bunning’s antics go on all night and ultimately prevent an extension from passing, but other Republicans went to bat for Bunning, arguing that the Democrats should simply respect Bunning’s hold. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) said, “I believe we’re stooping to a low level. This is not the way the Senate functions. Everybody in the country now knows that the senator from Kentucky has a hold on this bill. … That’s something that we honor in this body.”

“I just don’t think one senator ought to be able to heap this kind of suffering and misfortune on people who are already struggling in this economy,” Durbin said. “This is a wild pitch you are throwing tonight because it is pitch that is hitting somebody in the stands.” 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire next month, and 5 million will lose their benefits by June.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said yesterday that he is willing to hold an extension of unemployment benefits hostage in the Senate unless he is given the opportunity to cut taxes for the very wealthiest estates in the country. And other members of the GOP caucus are not making things any easier.

First, Reid attempted to pass the extension by unanimous consent late last night, only to see the attempt thwarted by Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who blocked the measure because of “a dispute over how it should be funded.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), meanwhile, said that he would support a short-term extension of benefits, but doesn’t want to accommodate Reid’s request for a full-year extension:

If we intend to have some immediate impact on the economy through what we’re doing, why would we be extending unemployment insurance for a year?

This is problematic on a couple of levels. First, providing unemployment benefits is one of the best actions that the government can take in terms of stimulating the economy, because the money is almost certain to be spent quickly. Every dollar spent on unemployment benefits generates more than $1.60 in economic activity, which is far more stimulus than is generated by any sort of tax cut. So the benefits extension, by itself, has an “immediate impact on the economy.”

Second, even if job creation were already booming, it would take some time for the number of jobs lost during the recession to be regained. In the meantime, 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in the next month, and 2.7 million are on track to lose them by April. By June, the number is 5 million. Even if the economy starts adding jobs, all of these people are not going to find work right away.

There are currently six unemployed workers for every job opening. And to provide a sense for how long it will take to claw back to full employment, even without compensation for population increases, we’d need to generate 350,000 jobs a month for two full years just to make up the jobs lost in the recession.

So it’s a very steep hill to climb, and in the meantime, people’s benefits are going to run out and they’ll be left with nothing. In fact, some jurisdictions are already sending out letters informing people that their benefits are going to expire. And let’s not forget, the last time an extension was considered, the GOP obstructed it for weeks with procedural hurdles and nonsense amendments about ACORN, and then the bill passed on a 98-0 vote. Perhaps this time they can dispense with the gamesmanship and do what needs to be done?

Since the debate over financial regulatory reform began, the Obama administration has been pushing for an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), which would be charged with protecting consumers from deceptive and unfair financial products. In early January, when Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT), who is leading negotiations on financial reform in the upper chamber, seemed to be leaning towards ditching the CFPA, one White House official reportedly told Dodd that an independent agency was “nonnegotiable.”

But according to the Washington Post, “the Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element” of regulatory reform:

In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources. President Obama’s economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency.

“In either case, they are insisting on a regulator with political autonomy and real teeth so it can effectively enforce rules designed to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products,” the Post added.

This seems an odd moment for the administration to signal its willingness to drop the agency, considering that just two days ago, Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr said in a speech that “bringing regulation of consumer financial markets regulation out from under prudential regulators is the most effective way to provide the accountability and effectiveness the system is lacking.” “Real accountability requires a grant of the authority, tools, and resources needed to achieve the mandate. And accountability must be supported by real independence to make and carry out decisions,” he said.

Placing the consumer protection office within Treasury could pose some real problems, even if it has an independently appointed director. Would it be on equal footing with the bank regulators? Would it have independent rule-writing authority? How about enforcement abilities? Does the Treasury Secretary have the ability to overrule the office’s decisions? Unless the agency can independently act to rein in the banks, the consumer protection status quo doesn’t change.

The administration may be trying to float ideas that will get Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), who has been working with Dodd, on board, since the CFPA has been Republicans’ main point of objection. But Corker and Dodd are reportedly going in a completely new direction, proposing to create a new bank super-regulator, with one division for bank regulation and another for consumer protection. At least until the contours of this deal are known, the administration should keep pressing for an independent CFPA, instead of preemptively giving it away in exchange for nothing.

And at the end of the day, as Tim Fernholz wrote, compromising away vital parts of the legislation in order to secure Corker’s support means the reforms “won’t be worth the time it will take the Senate to pass them.” Dodd should get the best bill that he can onto the floor and dare Republicans (and conservative Democrats) to vote against it.

Yesterday, I asked whether or not Senate Republicans would help expedite the process of extending unemployment benefits that are set to expire at the end of the month, since the last time that an extension was considered, the GOP blocked it for weeks with non-related amendments, before the bill ultimately passed by an overwhelming 98-0 vote.

Well, it seems like at least one Republican is not, in fact, going to ensure that unemployed workers keep their benefits without first trying to cut taxes for the heirs of multi-millionaires:

On Wednesday, a top Republican leader said a deal on the bill would depend on working out the fate of the expired estate tax…Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said that Republicans will block consideration of the new bill unless they get “a path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

“I will insist on an agreement on how to proceed [on the estate tax], if we’re going to have unanimous consent on how to proceed with any of these subsequent bills,” said Kyl.

This is a fairly shocking admission of priorities. 1.1 million workers are scheduled to have their unemployment benefits expire in the next month, with 2.7 million on track to lose them by April, while unemployment is still at 9.7 percent and there are six unemployed workers for every job opening. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, which is the most since the government began keeping track in 1948 and “more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.” Yet Kyl is willing to hold unemployment benefits hostage in order to fashion a tax cut for heirs of the very wealthiest estates.

Due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick, the estate tax is currently expired, but it is set to come back in 2011 at the Clinton-era level, which Kyl has an intense interest in preventing. His proposal to slash the estate tax rate and increase its exemption would cost $250 billion over ten years, with 99 percent of the benefit going to the heirs of multi-millionaires. Under 2009 law, only 0.2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax at all.

And it’s partially Kyl’s fault that the expiration happened at all. Back in December, Democrats tried to put in place a temporary extension that would have prevented the tax’s expiration. But Kyl, along with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), blocked it in order to advocate for repealing the tax entirely.

Today, the Senate passed a $15 billion jobs bill (with the help of a group of Republicans who voted for the measure after voting to filibuster it two nights ago), so the upper chamber is now set to move onto other economic measures, including a much-needed extension of unemployment benefits.

The stimulus package passed last year ensured unemployment benefits through the end of 2009, which Congress then extended through the end of this month. But 1.1 million workers are now scheduled to lose their benefits in March, and with the deadline looming some states are already sending letters informing the recipients that they are at the end of the line.

So all the signs point toward expedience in addressing this problem, and Reid is reportedly pursuing a one-year extension so that this same scenario doesn’t arise again in a few months. But it’s unclear whether or not the Republicans are going to lend the effort any support, with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) saying that the GOP is “concerned about the high cost” of any extension.

With that in mind, it’s worth remembering how Senate Republicans responded the last time that an extension was needed. Not only did they repeatedly block the measure from even coming to the Senate floor for weeks on end, but they also attempted to attach all manner of unrelated items to the bill, including provisions related to ACORN and immigration. To top it all off, when the final vote on extending benefits finally came, the measure passed 98-0.

Earlier this month, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked a simple stop-gap extension that would have moved the expiration of benefits back a week because he was upset at Reid for discarding a jobs bill that Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had negotiated.

“It doesn’t represent what this Senate ought to be about and for goodness’ sakes, it doesn’t represent the kind of bipartisanship that was always behind voting for unemployment benefits,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), regarding the GOP’s actions. “This Republican obstruction, when it comes to something this basic, is fundamentally unfair.”

“It is critical for Congress to extend these benefits through all of 2010,” said Christine Owens, Executive Director of the National Employment Law Project. “Clearly, workers need continued support while our economy meets the tall order of creating of nearly 11 million jobs to bring employment back to prerecession levels.” So will the GOP play politics with the extension again or let the non-controversial and necessary measure come to the floor?

This morning, the Senate passed a $15 billion jobs bill that includes four provisions: a payroll tax break for hiring unemployed workers, an extension of highway construction funding, Build America bonds to help states fund infrastructure projects, and an extension of tax breaks for equipment purchase. The final vote for passage was 70-28, with 13 Republicans joining all but one Democrat in voting yea.

But this vote only occurred because on Monday night 5 Republicans joined the same group of Democrats in order to invoke cloture and overcome a filibuster by a 62-30 vote. Below are the Republicans who either voted against or did not vote at all on the cloture motion, but flipped and voted for the bill today.

NAY TO YEA	ABSENT TO YEA
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)	Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS)	Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)
Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL)
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)

In addition to this flip-flop, all the above senators except Inhofe voted to sustain a Republican objection on a point of order before proceeding to the final vote. Plus, I noted two days ago that both Inhofe and Hatch were planning to vote against cloture despite the bill including provisions of which they have been extremely supportive. Inhofe followed through with his nay vote on cloture, while Hatch skipped the vote entirely, but both came around to support the bill today.

After the vote, Alexander said that he voted for the final bill “because it is modest.” “There are plenty of opportunities for bipartisan cooperation,” he said, which of course begs the question regarding why he couldn’t engage in bipartisan cooperation just two days ago if he supported the bill.

The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, which last year passed a far more ambitious $154 billion jobs creation package. Earlier today, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) predicted that the House will pass the Senate bill as is.

According to reports in both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the “Volcker rule” — which would bar banks from trading for their own benefit with federally insured deposits — is facing resistance in the Senate and will likely be watered down, if it’s included at all, in the regulatory reform proposal that Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) hopes to unveil next week. Dodd has been negotiating with Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) in an attempt to craft a proposal that can garner bipartisan support, and the two have been saying that the Volcker rule is not being discussed much.

A few weeks ago, Dodd signaled that he may drop the Volcker rule outright as a way to pick up some Republican support for the wider bill. But interestingly, Republicans on the banking committee don’t seem to have any problem with the concept behind the Volcker rule:

– A spokesman for Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said that Shelby “supports the spirit of the Volcker rule,” but he is “not convinced that the proposal itself is necessary.”

– Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) said that “conceptually” the Volcker rules makes sense, but that Treasury is “having trouble putting their arms around it.”

Why then, if both sides support the idea, would it be dropped? Instead of implementing the Volcker rule, the tide seems to be moving in favor of allowing regulators to ban proprietary trading at banks on a case-by-case basis, if the regulators deem that the trading is posing a threat to the health of a particular bank.

That approach might work if regulators are actually on their game, but the last crisis proved that regulators have a tendency to turn a blind eye to practices that lead to big bank profits. For instance, the Federal Reserve had the capability to regulate mortgage lending in the lead-up to the subprime crisis, but did nothing, while other regulators actively exempted firms from rules aimed at reining in their lending practices. Counting fully on diligent regulators can lead to catastrophe, especially if you have someone like President Bush appointing them, since he sought regulators who would be lax on the enforcement side.

This week, five former Treasury Secretaries endorsed the Volcker rule in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. “We fully understand that the restriction of proprietary activity by banks is only one element in comprehensive financial reform. It is, however, a key element in protecting our financial system and will assure that banks will give priority to their essential lending and depository responsibilities,” they wrote.

“For any reform to be effective, it is important that we go back to separating, in some function or other, the normal banking activities of commercial banks from the trading activities,’’ said W. Michael Blumenthal, who was Treasury Secretary under President Carter. “The mixing of those two has gotten us into trouble, and it’s important to fix it.” Former Citigroup CEO John Reed agreed, saying that “the industry should be compartmentalized so as to limit the propagation of failures.”

Yesterday, the White House pushed back on reports that it was open to watering down the Volcker rule. “We’re as committed to that now as we were on that day,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said yesterday. “We’re not walking away from what the president outlined on the Volcker rule.” If that’s true, they might want to get the message to the Senate.

If Democrats move to pass health care reform after tomorrow’s summit, their newfound momentum can be at least partly attributed to WellPoint’s decision to drastically increase premiums in California’s individual health insurance market. The rate increases highlighted the broken health care system and pressured lawmakers to drastically reform the individual health insurance market. The administration’s strong response also enunciated the differences in lawmakers’ approach to reform and may have pushed the President to add stronger cost control provisions into his health care blue-print.

WellPoint’s hikes created a political opportunity for reform, but California policy holders aren’t the only ones experiencing drastic rate increases. A new survey from the Center for American Progress Action Fund has found that “double-digit hikes have been implemented or are pending in at least 11 other states among the 14 where WellPoint’s Blue Cross Blue Shield companies are active: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Wisconsin.” Below is a sample:

– California: Average rates are expected to increase 25 percent in 2010, with increases as high as 39 percent for some policyholders.

– Colorado: Average rates are expected to increase 19.9 percent in 2010, with increases of up to 24.5 percent for some policyholders.

– Indiana: Rates are expected to increase 21 percent in 2010.

– Maine: Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield requested a 23 percent increase for 2010 after five straight years of double-digit increases for individual policyholders. Anthem is suing the Maine Insurance Commissioner for rejecting its request last year for an 18.5 percent rate hike and allowing a 10.9 percent increase.

– Ohio: Average individual rates are expected to decline 40 percent in 2010 due to a new state law that went into effect in 2010.

Hikes are the kind of thing that bring lofty political rhetoric about the need for reform into reality for millions of Americans. More importantly, they could convince those who already have coverage to pressure their lawmakers on reform. This morning, House members will have an opportunity to question WellPoint CEO Angela Braly about the rate hikes when she appears before the Energy and Commerce Committee. But let’s hope they use this report to do more than just talk.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

Newt Gingrich, through his political attack group “American Solutions for Winning the Future” (ASWF), has organized tea party protests, conservative legislative efforts, and is best known for driving the Republican “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign in 2008. Until now, the only known financial backers of ASWF were the donors disclosed on his 527 IRS forms, like Peabody Coal and investor Rex Sinquefield. Gingrich — who once believed in climate change science and believed the U.S. must act “urgently” to reduce carbon emissions — has moved far to the right on environmental issues, and has allied himself with polluters fighting tooth and nail against clean energy reform.

While his support from King Coal is widely known, new revelations reveal that Gingrich has established direct support from the oil lobby. The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the umbrella trade association for the oil industry, lobbying on behalf of corporations like ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as for refineries and pipeline companies. In addition to spending millions on political lobbying, API has blanketed the country with pro-oil drilling ads and has coordinated “grassroots” rallies to oppose clean energy reform.

At CPAC — which was sponsored in part by API — ThinkProgress spoke to API representative André Carter at his organization’s booth at the convention. Carter is an account executive at Edelman, the K Street public relations firm that manages API. Carter told ThinkProgress that API has been “sharing resources, coordinating efforts” with Gingrich’s ASWF group for some time. When contacted for comment, API spokesman Bill Bush disputed that API was “working in any way” with Gingrich.

ASWF spokesman R.C. Hammond also denied Carter’s comments, telling ThinkProgress that “there’s no record of us working together.” But ThinkProgress interviewed Gingrich yesterday at an event he was hosting at the press club, where he told us that indeed he has been working with API since the “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign:

TP: But do you know how long you guys have been working with API? I’m trying to chart it.

GINGRICH: I have no idea. I think it came after the Drill Here, Drill Now campaign.

Listen here:

Gingrich postures as a man dedicated to simply serving the “key concerns of the American People.” But through ASWF, his constant strategy sessions with GOP lawmakers, and his ubiquitous punditry, Gingrich is actually advancing the narrow interests of corporations, in this case the oil industry. Given API’s attempt to conceal its relationship with ASWF, the oil industry understands they need ostensibly independent ambassadors like Gingrich to build public support for their policies.

As the Wonk Room has detailed, GOP politicians fighting reform have relied heavily on corporate lobbyists to orchestrate their efforts. Gingrich touts himself as an author, a “futurist,” a conservative thinker. Anything but a lobbyist. Considering the fact Gingrich lobbies lawmakers on policy, and does so in concert with industry that would benefit from his lobbying, in many ways Gingrich is essentially an unregistered lobbyist.

Yesterday, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on a $15 billion jobs bill by a vote of 62-30, with Republican Sens. Scott Brown (MA), Olympia Snowe (ME), Susan Collins (ME), George Voinovich (OH) and Kit Bond (MO) voting to advance the measure, along with all but one Democrat (Nebraska’s Ben Nelson). Debate on the bill is taking place today and Reid is hoping for final passage tomorrow.

During today’s discussion, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) took to the floor to decry what he sees as a lack of open debate on the part of the Senate — because a jobs plan that he has isn’t being considered — and to take a shot at Democrats for “the partisan, procedural position we’re in”:

Why shouldn’t this [proposal] be actively considered, and debated, and voted on on the floor of the Senate? We’re supposed to be considering a jobs bill. That’s progress. At least, finally, we’re focusing on jobs…I came to the Senate hearing that this was the body of full, open debate, full, open consideration of amendments. Problem is, my experience here in five years has been anything but that, including, yet again, this week, on this legislation, as we’re trying to address the top issue of the American people — jobs and the economy — why can’t we have a full debate?…I find it unfortunate that that’s the partisan, procedural position we’re in.

Watch it:

Of course, all of these complaints would hold a lot more water if Vitter hadn’t voted just last night, along with 29 other Republicans, to prevent the Reid bill from ever coming to the floor. Now he’s calling it “progress” that the Senate is addressing jobs, while last night he was content to block a jobs bill from ever seeing the light of day.

In fact, prior to last night’s vote, Republican leadership was “hoping to persuade waffling members” to block the jobs bill entirely. And the GOP was very up front that it wasn’t objecting to the bill’s substance — as its members very openly advocated for portions of it in the past — but because they didn’t like the process in which it was crafted.

But this is just part and parcel of the unprecedented level of obstruction that Republicans have employed recently. As Ezra Klein pointed out, at the rate the Senate is going, the number of cloture votes filed by the end of the year will bring the 2007-10 total “to about what the Senate saw between 1919 and 1984.” “Say what you will about the Senate, but this is not traditional,” Klein added.

Meanwhile, the jobs plan that Vitter would like to have considered is the same as the “no-cost stimulus” plan that he offered early last year, which consisted entirely of opening more land up to oil drilling and removing regulations on oil companies. Back when it was first presented, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer mocked the plan by saying “so your answer here is to allow damage to the environment, in order to create jobs?”

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) has been taking some well-deserved heat recently for lambasting the stimulus as “misdirected,” “incoherent,” and “largely wasted,” at the same time that one-third of the fix he uses to balance Minnesota’s budget is stimulus money. Plus, as Minnesota Public Radio pointed out today, Pawlenty is counting on this funding, but refused to join an overwhelming majority of the nation’s governors in publicly saying so:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty refused Monday to sign a letter from the nation’s governors calling on Congress to pass an extension of part of the federal stimulus, a bill that Pawlenty is counting on to balance Minnesota’s budget. Pawlenty refused to sign the letter from the National Governor’s Association calling on Congress to extend stimulus funds for Medicaid for six more months. 47 of the 55 governors of states and territories signed the letter.

Pawlenty also used stimulus money to balance his state’s budget last year, which went towards health care for low income Minnesotans, public education and public safety. And while Pawlenty includes in his stimulus criticism the view that the stimulus should have done more to cut taxes, Minnesota state economist Tom Stinson has pointed out that, in fact, the stimulus included hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts.

Other Republican governors were not so hesitant to sign onto the letter, including Gov. Bob McDonnell (VA). Gov Haley Barbour (R-MS) also signed on, even though he was part of a group of GOP governors who initially rejected portions of the stimulus last year. Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL), as part of his on-again, off-again relationship with the stimulus, said yesterday that accepting stimulus funding was “the responsible and right thing to do for the people and it puts people above politics.”

That the overwhelming majority of governors signed the letter highlights just how dire the fiscal situation is for states across the country. According to a new report from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, “state tax collections shrank at the end of 2009 for a fifth consecutive quarter, the longest period of continuing state revenue declines since at least the Great Depression.” Collectively, states face about $180 billion in budget shortfalls for fiscal year 2011 (which begins July 1 for most states), and according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “without further federal aid, the actions states will have to take to close their budget gaps could cost the economy 900,000 jobs.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) spent the last week looking to drum up some Republican votes for a $15 billion jobs bill that is scheduled to face a cloture vote today (which would begin debate). Republican leaders have been pressuring members to simply block the legislation, but on Fox News Sunday yesterday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the GOP “may well” support the bill.

However, two Senators have definitively said that they are going to vote against the bill. And both are doing so despite the inclusion of provisions that they have been extremely supportive of:

– Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said that he won’t support the bill, even though it includes the Schumer-Hatch payroll tax credit, which Hatch has called “an affordable, effective and targeted proposal to get the American people back to work.” “It’s a very, very smart thing to do,” he told CNBC.

– Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) said that he won’t support the bill even though it includes an extension of highway funding that he has been “pushing very hard” for. In fact, Inhofe has said that “for the sake of jobs back home and across America, it is imperative that Congress move quickly to pass [an extension].” He also called an extension vital to “restoring our economy and creating good jobs for American workers.” Last week, one of Inhofe’s aides called the highway funding a “high priority” for the senator.

This resembles other GOP reversals of late, including the senators who voted against pay-as-you-go rules despite previously extolling their virtues and the senators who voted against the creation of a deficit commission after having co-sponsored the legislation.

In fact, Republicans aren’t even pretending to oppose the jobs bill on substance, but instead are complaining about the process, after Reid threw out an $85 billion “compromise” bill negotiated by Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA). One Republican aide told Congressional Quarterly that GOP opposition is due to “feelings of anger and disbelief with Reid’s move to kill the bipartisan proposal.” But as I’ve noted before, there was simply no reason for Reid to concede to Republican demands on a batch of provisions that the GOP admitted do “not create one job.”

Reid is reportedly still working to secure the votes of Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME). And all of this is for a $15 billion bill that will not make a major dent in unemployment. As AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka put it, “if this $15 billion was the only thing [that passed], that would be like having an amputated arm and sticking a Band-Aid on the end of it.”

Our guest blogger is senior fellow John Halpin, co-director of the Progressive Studies Program at the Center for American Progress.

Glenn Beck’s dire warning yesterday at CPAC against progressivism — “the cancer in America” — was truly one for the Texas state history books. In exacting detail, Beck outlined for the uninitiated conservatives in attendance how progressivism is a dangerous form of mind control that has eroded our constitutional order and brought tyranny to our innocent shores.

What is a concerned patriot to do to recover his lost country?

According to the iron-clad logic of the chalkboard, the only way to combat this oppression is to fight for the repeal of the Progressive and New Deal eras and everything progressivism has ever done to this country. And here is what conservatives will get for this brave liberation of the body politic from the horrors of progressivism:

– No one will ever again have to work an 8-hour day or a 40-hour week or be forced to relax on the weekend. (Progressives established the legal framework for the modern workweek.)

– America’s children can get back to the factories. (Progressives banned child labor.)

– Rich people will have incentives to work again and their heirs will be free to find themselves. (Progressives established the graduated income and inheritance taxes.)

– The unemployed can take to the railways. (Progressives created unemployment insurance.)

– Women and minorities will be protected from the hardship of voting. (Progressives expanded suffrage and passed civil rights legislation.)

– The natural resources sector will have more opportunities to ply its trade on millions of acres of national parks and wilderness areas. (Progressives established conservation and the protection of American lands and waterways.)

– The nation’s food and drug supply can come in undisturbed from other nations. (Progressives created regulatory protections for consumers.)

– Citizens won’t have to worry about electing their own Senators or political candidates. (Progressives expanded the right of citizens to select their own leaders in Congress and in party politics.)

– Workers will be free to pay for their own accidents at work and won’t have to listen to meddlesome unions. (Progressives passed workers’ compensation laws and recognitions of labor unions.)

– The minimum wage will no longer harm our economy. (Progressives created a floor for wages.)

– People won’t have to suffer from the indignities of Social Security and Medicare in their old age. (Progressives passed basic social protections for the poor, sick, disabled, and elderly.)

The Revolution starts today. Back to the 1890’s!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is reportedly having a bit of trouble rounding up the votes to begin debate on a $15 billion jobs bill because (surprise, surprise), Republicans have threatened to filibuster. This problem has become further complicated because Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has been diagnosed with cancer that, while treatable, will force him to miss the vote that Reid has planned for Monday.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) had been dancing back and forth on whether or not she would support the Reid bill. Yesterday, she finally relented and said that she would vote for cloture, but lamented that an earlier $85 billion bill negotiated by Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was scrapped, as in her opinion it would have done more in terms of job creation:

“I do not think Arkansans want us to stop at a ‘slimmed down’ effort to put people back to work,” Lincoln said in her statement. “Sen. Reid’s alternative does contain provisions I support, but I see no reason we cannot move forward on the Baucus-Grassley measure, which does more.”

Reid dumped the Baucus/Grassley bill because, first, it was full of tax measures that have nothing to do with job creation; and second, Baucus and Grassley had also come to an agreement that a huge cut in the estate tax would come up for a vote. In fact, they called agreement to consider the estate tax “essential to completing action” on the jobs bill.

Everyone across the spectrum — from business groups, to economists, to Republican members of Congress — said that the extra provisions weren’t about job creation at all. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) admitted as much, saying that “all of that has to be done, but it does not create one job.”

As I’ve pointed out before, there was no reason for Reid to allow the GOP to hold a modest bill hostage, particularly when it came to cutting the estate tax, which is a long-time conservative goal that is unrelated to job creation. But Lincoln is also a big proponent of cutting the estate tax to the tune of $250 billion over ten years, 99 percent of which would go to benefit multi-millionaires.

There are plenty of ways in which the Reid bill could be improved to increase the number of jobs that it would create. But the proposals that Baucus and Grassley negotiated have nothing to do with that, despite what Lincoln claims.

Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, the Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This week, the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes penned a column lauding Senator George Lemieux’s (R-FL) “2007 solution” for fixing the federal budget. Lemieux, writes Barnes, has “done the math” and his plan is simple:

If government spending were reduced to its 2007 level, we’d have a balanced budget (with a $163 billion surplus). Returning to the 2008 level of spending, the budget would be balanced in 2014 (a $133 billion surplus). And in both cases, that’s while keeping the Bush tax cuts across the board and indexing the loathed alternative minimum tax for inflation.

Now I know that math can be tricky, but there are some pretty simple addition and subtraction issues here. Total federal spending in 2007 was $2.7 trillion. CBO estimates that this year the federal government will collect $2.2 trillion in revenues. So, even if we were spending at 2007 levels, we would still have a $500 billion deficit, not the $163 billion surplus Lemieux claims.

But let’s leave aside the easily disprovable claim that cutting spending back to 2007 levels would immediately produce a budget surplus and get to the real meat of the Senator’s proposal.

Lemieux says that if we limited government spending to 2008 levels, then we would have a surplus of $133 billion by 2014, even after making the Bush tax cuts permanent and indexing the AMT for inflation. In 2008 the federal government spent just under $3 trillion dollars and CBO estimates that revenues in 2014 will be around $3.1 trillion if the Bush tax cuts remain and the AMT is permanently fixed. So, at least Lemieux has his math approximately correct this time. So this plan sounds reasonable, right?

Well, in order to get 2014 spending down to 2008 levels, Congress would have to find about $1.2 trillion in savings just in 2014. To give you a sense of what that would mean, in 2008 Social Security spending was $612 billion. In 2014, it’s projected to be about $842 billion. Cutting Social Security back to 2008 levels would mean that benefits to retirees in 2014 would have to be slashed by $230 billion. That translates into an average cut of about $4,000 per beneficiary, a 28 percent reduction in benefits. (Calculations after the jump.)

And how about Medicare? Medicare spending is estimated to be $622 billion in 2014, compared to $386 billion in 2008, so Lemiuex’s plan would require finding $236 billion in reductions for just one year.

Now I’m sure that the good senator from Florida would never support such massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but if he doesn’t, then I’d like to know where else he’s going to find $1.2 trillion? The entire non-defense discretionary budget is projected to be about half of that in 2014, so even completely eliminating veteran’s benefits, the Transportation Security Administration, all aid to elementary schools, highway funding and farm subsidies wouldn’t get us even close to 2008 spending levels.

George Lemieux may have “done the math” but he clearly hasn’t thought this one through.

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When it first came before the House of Representatives, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was defeated after House Republicans failed to deliver on their promised votes. At the time, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) and other House Republicans circulated a plan that, instead of authorizing the government to purchase toxic assets, would have it ensure hundreds of billions of dollars in mortgages.

Cantor claimed that the plan “does not leave the American taxpayers with the bag and makes sure that Wall Street pays for this recovery.” However, as economist Robert Waldmann noted then, “I can’t manage to find any reason to doubt that the House Republicans’ plan would destroy the US financial system,” as it actually gave mortgage holders an incentive to push for defaults (since the U.S. would explicitly cover the losses).

As it turns out, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson didn’t think very much of Cantor’s plan either (or the GOP response to the economic crisis, as a whole), and in his memoir derides Cantor’s “unformed” proposal:

[M]eetings with the Senate GOP were “a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything,” and Eric Cantor’s suggestion that TARP be replaced with an insurance program was met with outright derision from Paulson. The usually un-snarky Paulson hits the minority whip with particularly hard, ridiculing Cantor’s insurance plan by sarcastically suggesting the administration abandon efforts to prop up the collapsing financial system – just to try out Cantor’s unproven, “unformed” insurance scheme. “I got a better idea. I’m going to go with Eric Cantor’s insurance program,” he writes. “That’s the idea to save the day.”

TARP, for all of its warts and lack of accountability, really did pull the economy back from the edge, and the ultimate losses are going to be far below the headline $700 billion (and in theory will be totally recouped by the Obama administration’s proposed bank tax, which Cantor opposes).

But this just completes what has been a bad week for Cantor. He has had to answer a slew of questions about his obvious hypocrisy regarding the economic stimulus package, which he voted against, but still trumpets projects from. And he has continued this game, appearing on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show last night to claim that “jobs weren’t created” by the stimulus, but he has still appeared at events to tout a high-speed rail line project funded by the stimulus that he says will “create a lot of jobs.” He has cited estimates of 85,000-160,000 jobs created by the project. Watch a compilation:

Late last year, the House passed a $154 billion jobs bill, but at the moment Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is having trouble rounding up the votes to even begin debate on a far more modest $15 billion effort that relies heavily on tax incentives for small businesses to hire.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as well as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have cast doubt on whether or not these kind of hiring incentives can significantly reduce unemployment (and many economists think that they really can’t), but remarkably, it’s Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) who diagnosed the problem the best:

“There’s a question of whether that puts the cart before the horse,” said Nelson. “If I don’t have enough customers for my product, hiring more people is not going to help and tax credits are not going to be to my advantage.”

Nelson is exactly right. According to the latest National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) small business survey, the biggest problem affecting small businesses is “shortage of customers.” And despite all the lip-service paid to boosting small business loans, only 5 percent of businesses cite “financing” as their top problem, while 31 percent point to “poor sales.” “Small business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009, depressed,” said William Dunkelberg, NFIB chief economist. “The biggest problem continues to be a shortage of customers. Don’t expect much spending or hiring until these trends reverse.”

So the logical step is to pursue policies that will boost demand, through immediately putting people back to work and getting funds to those most likely to spend them. As Heather Boushey wrote, “to create jobs today, we need to do much more to fill in demand by giving businesses more customers.” David Madland added that “employing more people doesn’t just get those workers back on the job; it affects the momentum of the economy, which ultimately creates the cycle of private sector job creation that we need.”

They (and many others) have advocated new job creation efforts including fiscal aid for states, directing federal money into national service programs, and ensuring that unemployment benefits and other social safety net mechanisms aren’t allowed to expire. Since Nelson seems to understand the problem, why isn’t he advocating for actions along those lines? And, for that matter, why was he one of the catalysts behind a bipartisan “compromise” that cut billions of dollars of this kind of funding from the economic stimulus package?

Unfortunately, the jobs proposals before the Senate are nowhere near ambitious enough to make a significant dent in an unemployment rate that the White House has estimated will still be at 9.8 percent at year’s end. And this is despite the preponderance of evidence pointing to the necessary steps.

Yesterday, The Hill reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) may not have the votes to begin debate on a $15 billion jobs package. Reid, for his part, is reaching out to Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), in the hopes that he will provide support to overcome a GOP filibuster. A Reid spokesman said simply that “the vote is in the hands of Republicans.”

However, as Roll Call reported, the Senate Republican leadership is trying to persuade members to simply block the legislation. And this push comes after the GOP spent an afternoon huddled with more than 100 lobbyists, trying to figure out how to react to Reid’s bill:

Senate Republican leadership staff are huddling with K Streeters this afternoon over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) decision to forgo a bipartisan jobs package in favor of a smaller, targeted plan…The business community has been up in arms since Reid decided to ditch a bipartisan job-creation bill last week.

And this is not the first time that Republicans have organized a pow-wow with lobbyists in order to devise a strategy and gin up support for killing a significant Democratic initiative:

– Regulatory Reform: In December, more than 100 financial services lobbyists met with House Republicans “to try to fight back against financial regulatory overhaul legislation.” According to one lobbyist who attended the meeting, the Republican message was “look, you all oppose this bill, but only a few of you have come out publicly.”

– Health Care Reform: In June, Senate Republicans met with health care lobbyists in order to “recruit stakeholders to oppose options such as a government-funded insurance plan and a mandate requiring employers to help pay for heath insurance.” “We’re trying to engage them because as more and more of this comes out, we think a lot of them have been told out of fear to keep silent,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD). Republicans also requested that health care lobbyists be given at least 72 hours to review any legislative language in the Senate Finance Committee.

– Cap and Trade: In June, Senate Republicans organized a “hearing” with energy industry representatives, which the GOP characterized as an attempt “to poison the well for cap-and-trade policies.”

A report released this week by the Center for Responsive Politics revealed that $1.3 million was spent on lobbying for every hour that Congress was in session last year. All told, lobbyists’ clients spent more than $3.47 billion last year on efforts to influence legislation, which was a new record, topping the $3.3 billion spent in 2008.