Republicans Tied in Knots Over Corporate Loyalties

by Clyde Weiss  |  July 22, 2011

Always beholden to the Big Business interests who got them there, Republican lawmakers in both houses of Congress are finding out how hard it is to maintain loyalties – especially when big money players like billionaires Charles and David Koch are pushing one way, and T. Boone Pickens is pushing another. 

In an article in the July 22 Politico, Kenneth P. Vogel writes that Oklahoma Rep. John Sullivan (R) – the key sponsor of a bill to provide tax breaks worth as much as $5 billion to the natural gas industry – find himself in a difficult spot.

The problem: The bill would help the bottom line of Pickens, who owns a 40 percent stake in Clean Energy Fuels, which builds natural gas fueling stations. But its passage would hurt Koch Industries because it would increase the price of natural gas, which the company uses for manufacturing.

The Koch brothers, major benefactors to right-wing causes and tea party candidates, are pressuring GOP lawmakers to oppose the bill, and rewarding them with campaign contributions when they drop their support. Vogel says they’re making headway.

This is what happens when big corporate interests like the Kochs and Pickens run Congress. Lawmakers find themselves torn between loyalties – corporate loyalties. Just ask Sullivan, who told Politico:

“What it is, you’ve got two bulls in a field fighting each other, and I’m just a small pawn in the whole thing.”

Perhaps, but he’s a pawn in a corporate-funded game he helped create.