The attempted coup of January 6, 2021, prompted a number of corporations to suspend political donations to the “Sedition Caucus”—the 147 members of Congress who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election.
Over the past four decades, corporations and their Republican henchmen have passed measure after measure to increase inequality by slashing tax rates for corporations and the top one-tenth of the one percent of wealthy individuals.
Was this a moment of Corporate America valuing democracy more than its cozy relationships with the ultra-right members of Congress? Did this signify that major corporations had finally recognized their social responsibility to the people of the United States? Would this suspension of financial support help curb the increasingly extremist and authoritarian elements within the Republican Party?
The answer to these questions has arrived, and it is a resounding “No.”
As a new study by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reveals that many of the biggest players in Corporate America are “giving like nothing ever happened” with the deadly insurrection aimed at stopping the counting of electoral votes. “By continuing to fund members of Congress who would undermine democracy, these corporations are sacrificing democratic government for access and influence,” CREW states.
Donations came from a broad range of the nation’s biggest and most powerful firms. The list includes dozens of household names: Boeing (the single largest source of funds, at $346,500), General Motors, Ford, Koch Industries, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, AT&T, UPS, Walmart, Toyota, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, Delta, ExxonMobil, Johnson & Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and other pillars of the corporate world. A much more limited group of firms including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have remained steadfast in withholding contributions to the 147 “seditionists.”
The top recipient of donations—$688,000 between campaign and leadership PAC money—was Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and current House Minority Leader. He has so far refused to testify before the January 6th Committee, writing, “It is with neither regret nor satisfaction that I have concluded to not participate with this select committee’s abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward.”
Other major recipients include Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana (who also serves as Minority Whip for the House of Representatives), Representative Sam Graves of Missouri, and Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, all also Republicans.
Among the key findings of the CREW report:
- About 75 percent of the corporations and business associations that were initially holding back political contributions have now opened up the spigots with a renewed torrent of donations to the Sedition Caucasus members.
- More than $18 million has been given out to more than 140 legislators who opposed certifying Biden's election.
- No less than 717 corporations and industry groups have donated to the Sedition Caucus.
Because corporations themselves cannot donate directly to campaigns and party committees, they have set up PACs in the name of their companies. These PACs are designed to use corporate funds to cover administrative costs and set up ‘matching’ programs that entice executives to contribute.
In January 2021, immediately after the suspension of funding by a number of corporations had been announced, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a panic attack. “[P]arts of the private sector keep dabbling in behaving like a woke parallel government,” he chided. “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.”
Adam Serwer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, wryly noted McConnell’s prior lack of qualms about raising corporate funds to enact Big Business’s agenda. “Apparently, corporations are allowed to behave as parallel governments only when they are vehicles for rightwing billionaires to hijack the country from outside the constitutional order.”
Over the past four decades, corporations and their Republican henchmen—sometimes with conservative Democratic collaboration—have passed measure after measure to increase inequality by slashing tax rates for corporations and the top one-tenth of the one percent of wealthy individuals. They have wielded a chainsaw against social-welfare programs, obstructed health care reform that is favored by 70 percent of Americans, and promoted the off-shoring of U.S. jobs.
As political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their 2020 book, Let Them Eat Tweets, “With increasing ruthlessness, Republican elites have embraced plutocratic priorities that lack appeal even among the party’s own voters—and that embrace has only grown tighter as the party’s public face has grown more ‘populist.’ ” Even as top Republicans increasingly rely on emotional “anger-point” social issues (transgender rights, school textbooks, support for the police, et cetera) to electrify their base and gather votes, the plutocratic agenda has been the unifying force behind the Republican Party.
So McConnell needn’t have worried that the very temporary suspension of funding was anything but hollow words carefully crafted by corporate public relations departments. As Hacker and Pierson pointed out, “Corporate leaders can tout their commitment to diversity and sustainability all they want. Their political expenditures mostly tell a different story. Until they invest seriously in changing the course of American politics and the Republican Party, their talk is cheap.”
In fact, the main thrust of major corporations’ political activity has remained money and taxes. In recent months, for example, the Business Roundtable departed from its newly found “wokeness” by launching a major campaign to block corporate tax increases aimed at funding programs in the Build Back Better plan.
Over the past year, the nation’s public spotlight has rightfully shone on the rise of virulent right-wing extremism that culminated in the January 6 riots. The threat to U.S. democracy is now greater perhaps than at any time since the Civil War.
But, instead of focusing on the menace to truly free elections and majority rule that we all face, giant corporations are subsidizing the seditionists and other Republicans who represent the real dangers to democracy.