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.”