Links to Americans for Tax Reform and ALEC

As evident by recent case in North Dakota

• 2021: A bill introduced in the North Dakota legislature sought to crack down on Apple and Google’s anticompetitive conduct in their app stores.

• New York Times reported that Koch Network Group Americans for Prosperity sided with Apple and Google against the app store antitrust bill in North Dakota.
• ALEC lobbied North Dakota legislators to vote against the app store antitrust bill.
• Americans for Tax Reform lobbied Arizona legislators to vote against an amendment similar to the app store antitrust bill that was proposed in North Dakota.

Google has funded both Americans for Tax Reform and ALEC

• Google listed Americans For Tax Reform as one of the third-party, tax-exempt groups to which its government affairs and public policy team gave one of its “most substantial” contributions.
• Google funded the American Legislative Exchange Council until 2014 when it broke from the organization over its views on climate change.
  • Google had served on ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force, which the Washington Post reported had developed proposals that may have been “enticing to tech companies.”
  • U.S. News & World Report: “For years, tech giants like Facebook, Google and Yahoo with deep roots in both libertarianism and the laissez faire tech culture of Silicon Valley had managed to find common cause with the American Legislative Exchange Council.”

• Google claimed it left ALEC because of its anti-climate change efforts, but ALEC had been “deliberately confusing climate science for years” and “hasn’t even been subtle about it.”
  • San Francisco Chronicle Headline: "Despite Recent Split From Conservative Group, Google’s Connections To Climate Change Denial Runs Deep"

Apple has been a member of ALEC and donated to Americans for Tax Reform

• Americans for Tax Reform rejected arguments that Apple was engaging in anticompetitive conduct in its app store.
  • Americans for Tax Reform accused Spotify of “fighting dirty” for accusing Apple of engaging in anticompetitive behavior in the app store.
  • Americans for Tax Reform dismissed accusations that Apple’s App Store discriminated against apps that were not its own, and said it was “very transparent” about its policies.
  • Americans for Tax Reform opposed a European Union decision that would require Apple to pay $14 billion because it used Ireland as a tax haven.

• Apple was a member of ALEC until around 2013 when disclosures about how ALEC operated and its controversial “model legislation” activities pushed corporate sponsors, including Apple, to cancel their memberships.

Americans for Tax Reform is a dark money group

• Americans for Tax Reform was a member of ALEC and five of its staff members attended ALEC’s annual meeting in 2019.
• Americans for Tax Reform received significant funding from corporate interests, particularly those in the pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and tobacco industries.
• Americans for Tax Reform and Grover Norquist were key players in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
  • 2006: The Senate Indian Affairs Committee found that Americans For Tax Reform served as a “conduit” for funds that flowed from Jack Abramoff’s clients to “surreptitiously finance grassroots lobbying campaigns.”
  • The Senate Indian Affairs Committee found that Grover Norquist was an “avid participant’ in Jack Abramoff’s schemes to channel money from affluent clients, especially Native American gaming interests, to former Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed.

• The Oregon Justice Department investigated Americans for Tax Reform for collecting money from Oregon business leaders and trade groups and then routing it into an Oregon anti-tax group in what authorities called a “laundering scheme.”
• 2012: Center for Responsive Politics found that Americans for Tax Reform used more than 51 percent of its spending on campaign activities, which tested IRS guidance that prevented tax-exempt groups from using the majority of their spending on campaign activities.
• 2012: Americans for Tax Reform told the FEC that it spent $15.8 million altogether on independent expenditures, but told the IRS it spent only $9.8 million on direct and indirect campaign activity.
  • Center for Responsive Politics found Americans for Tax Reform used at least a sizeable amount the $26.4 million grant it got from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS to fund its political ads.

• 2010: Americans for Tax Reform reported to the FEC that it spent $4.1 million on independent expenditures, but only reported $1.9 million in political spending to the IRS.

• Americans for Tax Reform Foundation took a pandemic small business loan between $150,000 and $300,000 even though it advocated for restraint in government spending.
  • Grover Norquist, the Executive Director of ATR, equated tax collection with getting mugged on the street and suggested that arguments for higher taxes on rich people echoed the arguments Nazis used to justify their targeting of Jews.
  • Grover Norquist: “Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."
  • Grover Norquist fought to privatize K-12 education and Social Security and became involved in funding union busting.
• Americans for Tax Reform has received at least $14,500 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
• Americans for Tax Reform Foundation has received more than $685,000 from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.
  • DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund’s donors were largely unknown, but several major conservative donors reported contributions to them, including the Koch brothers, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Devos Family and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
  • Conservative Transparency: “It is widely noted that [DonorsTrust] & [Donors Capital Fund] are a part of the ‘Koch Network.’"

• Americans for Tax Reform had received more than $37 million from conservative dark money groups and foundations, including $30 million from Crossroads GPS and $4.5 million from the Koch Network’s Center to Protect Patient Rights.
  • Crossroads GPS was a conservative dark money group founded by Karl Rove that caused the FEC to issue new guidance for independent expenditures because of how much money it spent in elections.

American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a bill mill for conservative causes

• USA Today reported that between 2010 and 2018, bills based on ALEC models were introduced nearly 2,900 times at the state level and in Congress, with more than 600 becoming law.
  • The Guardian reported that ALEC was a “secretive ‘bill mill’ responsible for spreading rightwing legislation across” the United States.
  • New York Times reported that ALEC drafted model bills that “broadly advance a pro-business, socially conservative agenda.”

• Brookings Institution’s Molly Jackman found that ALEC wielded “considerable influence in state legislatures,” the bills it promoted found their way into a majority of state legislatures and the percentage of their bills that passed was “strikingly high” compared to others that passed.
  • Mother Jones: “With more than 2,400 state lawmakers as members—roughly one third of the nation’s total—ALEC is a year-round clearinghouse for business-friendly legislation.”

• USA Today reported that ALEC “flourished because it also offers conservative Republican elected officials a social network, access to campaign donors and a blueprint for how to accelerate their political careers."
• USA Today reported that many of ALEC’s model bills “amount[ed] to wish lists for special interests, have become pervasive in the American legislative process.”
  • Bloomberg Businessweek reported that ALEC created “model legislation” that corporations could suggest to state legislators and corporations have even written bullet points of a piece of legislation.

• The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington argued what was problematic about ALEC was it gave corporations a vote and a veto that was equal to the power of state legislators and gave them a “direct plug into the system.”
  • Brookings Institution’s Molly Jackman: "One feature that separates ALEC from other lobbying ventures is that it partners with corporations whose interests span the space of conservative issues.”

• New York Times reported that ALEC’s rules gave corporations a “great deal of influence on the task forces, where model legislation must first clear a preliminary vote before going to the board.”
  • New York Times reported that ALEC bylaws allowed lawmakers to be removed from task force leadership for any reason but only allowed corporate members to be removed “with cause.”

• Arizona congresswoman Debbie Lesko acknowledged that ALEC was about corporations having influence at the state level.
• Mother Jones reported that what was troubling about ALEC was how the ideas and model bills were intentionally “divorced” from their source.
  • Mother Jones: “ALEC might better be described as one of the nation’s most powerful—and least known— corporate lobbies.”
  • Brookings Institution’s Molly Jackman: "ALEC is notoriously secretive about the process by which members draft and approve model legislation.”

• New York Times: “The records offer a glimpse of how special interests effectively turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists, providing them with talking points, signaling how they should vote and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes."
• The Guardian: “ALEC's critics have accused it of violating tax laws by lobbying on behalf of rightwing legislation that advances the interests of its corporate members.”
  • Bloomberg Businessweek: “ALEC creates the fiction that these bills grow wild in the fertile, democratic loam of America’s state legislatures."

• Common Cause accused ALEC of abusing its tax-exempt status. Documented Investigations said corporations and corporate lobbyists saw a big return on their investment in ALEC because it was often much cheaper than a direct lobbying campaign.
• USA Today reported that ALEC lost influence in 2012 after Trayvon Martin was shot, which sparked scrutiny of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Law, which was sponsored by ALEC members.
• Big corporations started leaving ALEC following the shooting of Trayvon Martin after ALEC came under “heavy, public scrutiny” for pushing “stand your ground” laws in the states.
• The Guardian reported that ALEC was supported by “some of the largest rightwing foundations” in the United States, including the Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust.
• Mother Jones: “Funded primarily by large corporations, industry groups, and conservative foundations—including R.J. Reynolds, Koch Industries, and The American Petroleum Institute—the group takes a chain-restaurant approach to public policy.”
• ALEC was primarily financed by its corporate members who spent at least $12,000 annually to be members. Corporate members had to pay an additional $5,000 to be on one of the organization’s task forces, which drafted and debated “model legislation” in secret.
• ALEC has received more than $1.6 million from the Charles Koch Foundation.
• ALEC has received almost one million from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.
  • DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund’s donors were largely unknown, but several major conservative donors reported contributions to them, including the Koch brothers, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Devos Family and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
  • Conservative Transparency: “It is widely noted that [DonorsTrust] & [Donors Capital Fund] are a part of the ‘Koch Network.’"

• ALEC has received more than $3.5 million from conservative foundations, including the Joyce and Donald Rumsfeld Foundation, the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.