Dems have raised more than $1 million this cycle from foreign-affiliated PACs

Democratic leaders in the House and Senate alleging GOP groups have funneled foreign money into campaign ads have seen their
party raise more than $1 million from political action committees
affiliated with foreign companies.

House and Senate Democrats have received about $1.02 million
this cycle from such PACs, according to an analysis compiled for The
Hill by the Center for Responsive Politics. House and Senate GOP
leaders have taken almost $510,000 from PACs on the same list.

{mosads}The PACS are funded entirely by contributions from U.S. employees of
subsidiaries of foreign companies. All of the contributions are made
public under Federal Elections Commission rules, and the PACs
affiliated with the subsidiaries of foreign corporations are governed
by the same rules that American firms’ PACs or other PACs would face.

“This is not foreign money per-se, but these PACs are certainly
populated by people who work for foreign companies,” said Dave
Levinthal, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics.

“Foreign companies and foreign governments can lobby Congress, and
that is probably one area where they have a measurable effect on
politics,” Levinthal explained. “Foreign-subsidiary political action
committees is about as close as you can get.”

Republicans with groups under fire from the White House say the hefty
campaign contributions illustrate Democratic hypocrisy.

“Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court and his adversaries over
the bogus charge of foreign money tainting elections — while leaders
in his own party had taken more than a million dollars from the
foreign cookie jar,” said Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for American
Crossroads, the political group at the center of the controversy.

“The hypocrisy here is just stunning,” he said.

American Crossroads, which is backed in part by former Bush White
House officials Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, has come under fire from
the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress for allegedly using
donations from abroad to fuel their political efforts.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads GPS, a group affiliated
with American Crossroads, have come under similar attack.

Both the Chamber and American Crossroads deny accepting foreign
dollars for use in their political efforts. The groups say they abide
by all applicable laws, which would require that any foreign money
they receive be accounted for separately and firewalled from their
political spending.

Democrats have acknowledged they have no evidence the groups are
taking money from abroad and using it to fund political attack ads
ahead of the midterm elections, but they argue that in the absence of
tougher campaign disclosure rules, it’s entirely possible.

They argue the difference between campaign donations from PACs
affiliated with foreign firms and contributions to the Crossroads
groups and the U.S. Chamber is that the former are subject to tougher
disclosure rules.

“The overarching issue here is that we don’t know where these entities
are raising money. It could be money from foreign corporation, big oil
or companies that want to outsource U.S. jobs,” said Doug Thornell, a
spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the chairman of the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Kenneth Gross, a former associate general counsel of the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) and campaign law expert, said there’s
nothing illegal or improper about what the foreign-affiliated PACs do.

“They are supporting U.S. candidates,” he said. “If some U.S.
candidate takes a position on a matter that affects a foreign
corporation, they have every right to contribute to that candidate.”

“The law doesn’t prohibit that, any more than the law prohibits a
foreign corporation from lobbying Congress,” Gross added.

The Center for Responsive Politics list tracks PAC receipts and
disbursements through Sept. 13 filings with the Federal Election
Commission (FEC). Not surprisingly, since Democrats have large
majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats for the year have
received more money for these PACs ($6.5 million) than Republicans
($5.6 million).

Pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline and aerospace contractor BAE
Systems are among the PACS with ties to
foreign companies that give the most to Democrats.

Republicans also complain that Obama has benefited in previous
campaign cycles from Democratic-oriented groups that didn’t disclose
their donations, at least until after the election was over. They
suggest it’s unclear whether some foreign money could have come in
from those donations.

“In 2008, the president benefited from $400 million worth of spending
by outside groups on his behalf in the presidential campaign, most of
whom did not reveal their donors,” Rove said Tuesday on Fox News. “I
guess that was not a threat to democracy then because this kind of
activity was being undertaken by Democrat groups.”

Democrats suggest the attacks will keep coming in the next three
weeks, in part because they believe they are working.

“I think it is having resonance,” Van Hollen said last week on MSNBC.
“I think that people are understanding that there’s this very
important nexus between the special interests who are spending these
millions of dollars and an agenda that doesn’t serve the interests of
the American people.”

Democrats have seized on the prospect of foreign influence in the
election to underscore their attacks against Republicans for blocking
the Disclose Act, campaign finance legislation meant to counteract the
effect of a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year loosening
restrictions on corporate and labor spending in elections. The
Disclose Act passed the House, but ultimately stalled in the Senate
after it won no GOP support.

Correction: KPMG LLP is not a corporation, but a limited liability partnership that is owned solely by its partners with no foreign parent. An earlier version of this story contained incorrect information.