Pandora's Box, Jurassic Park 2, the 83-17 split and how the Debt Ceiling gets raised...one way or the other.

It’s clear that the volume has suddenly turned up on the 14th Amendment argument.

Basically, where we’re at is this. Talks on the Debt Ceiling have broken down. The GOP was originally invested in a Debt Ceiling deal that had an 85-15 split of spending cuts to tax increases, that number coming from a report from the Conservative American Enterprise Institute. This was a report highlighted in fact on Speaker Boehner’s website. (Bet you dollars to doughnuts that that report has been taken down).

The good news in all this is that the spending cut number (around 2.4 Trillion over ten years) has pretty much been agreed to. This would be the 85 number.

Well, the Democrats offered an 83-17 split on spending cuts to tax increases (which included ending subsidies for Oil Companies and a Payroll Tax Cut), and that’s when Eric Cantor bailed on the talks and things pretty much collapsed.

Then the President spoke in a Press Conference that I enjoyed mightily. Still, the fact that the President had to speak was bad news because (as Ezra said on the day of the presser):

The best advice I’ve gotten for assessing the debt-ceiling negotiations was to “watch for the day when the White House goes public.” As long as the Obama administration was refusing to attack Republicans publicly, my source said, they believed they could cut a deal. And that held true. They were quiet when the negotiations were going on. They were restrained after Eric Cantor and Jon Kyl walked out last week. Press Secretary Jay Carney simply said, “We are confident that we can continue to seek common ground and that we will achieve a balanced approach to deficit reduction.” But today they went public.

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Let me take a moment to answer one of Lawrence's questions. He asked, why didn't the Obama White House just use the Clinton model for deficit reduction?

Ummm, Lawrence. Have you met today's Republican party?

So what happens now?

Well, frankly…it depends on how batshit insane the Republicans are, and how pissed off the Chamber of Commerce actually gets.

Remember the Chamber of Commerce warned Republicans flat out, that should they fail to raise the debt ceiling; “We will get rid of you”. Of course the Teabagger Caucus did not react kindly to that threat, but I have no doubt that the Chamber is serious. A Debt Default is going to have catastrophic and frankly, unpredictable consequences to the greater, planet-wide Economy. Remember September 15th, 2008? (aka, the day Barack Obama won election), well…that only times ten.

If you’re a conservative, things look pretty simple. You’ve got a President in the White House you don’t like. You’ve got a stalled economy that stalled because of your policies and ideas, but you’re still committed to those same policies and ideas because even though they make the middle class miserable, they don't count in your world. All that does count are the people you really work for (Rich folks and Multinational corporations). If you cooperate with the sitting President (aka, doing your job) there’s a chance things will get better for the people. Can't have that, because that would mean the President would get re-elected. However, if you hold out for your most cherished, bat-shit insane policy ideas that you wouldn’t even let see the light of day under a Bush Administration, well, not only can you stall any economic momentum for a recovery (thereby damaging the President), but you can also appeal and excite your own base in the process. WIN-WIN!!!

I would first refer the Chamber of Commerce to the story of Pandora’s Box. You let these batshit insane Teabagger shitheads into the tent, this is what you get:



In case, you don't understand why I'm making this particular movie reference, or have (rightfully) forgotten Jurassic Park 2. The idiots (aka, the main characters) decided to "rescue" a baby T-Rex. That'd be Mama in the video, sniffing clothes that are soaked in the baby's blood. Think of them as tax breaks for Corporate Jet owners for the purposes of this argument. "Hilarity" ensues after that.

The more the Chamber stands by its threat to destroy any Republican who stands against a raise in the Debt Ceiling, the more likely there is to be a deal. Period.

Fortunately, we are seeing signs of life from the Democrats. One, they've pretty much thrown down a hard marker on Medicare cuts. Ain't happenin' chief, what else you got? Senator Schumer is taking to the airwaves repeatedly to accuse Republicans publicly of the scenario I’ve outlined. And yesterday, on Keith’s new Countdown show, he brought forth Ryan Grim to first discuss the 14th Amendment scenario.



My inclination the moment Keith brought it up was to dismiss it (after all, this is Keith we’re talking about). But then Lawrence brought it up as well.

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I still kinda dismissed it, but the fact that he's got Bruce Bartlett to agree with the notion carries some weight with me.. But now, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has brought it up today, even though he has his doubts.

"It's certainly worth exploring," Schumer said. "I think it needs a little more exploration and study. It's probably not right to pursue at this point and you wouldn't want to go ahead and issue the debt and then have the courts reverse it."

Also, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's brought it up as well.

I still see this as officially a push by the Democrats to get this idea out there.

The Senator from Wall Street is right. We don’t know what the economic consequences would be of a debt default, we also don’t know how markets would react to the President simply ignoring Congress and continuing to borrow money.

If you were interested in buying up U.S. Bonds, how would you react to the President taking the podium and saying, basically, screw Cantor and Boehner. We’re going ahead, business as usual. My guess is a Bond buyer might hesitate, and say “Should we be buying this stuff. Is it safe? What does it mean?”

Between this threat, this new Nuclear Option, and the release of a new drop-dead default date of July 22, it’s clear the full court press is on.

Basically, what I see happening is this. The Democrats rattle the Nuclear Option theory. Republicans howl in protest. Jim DeMint says the Constitution didn’t mean what it says. Someone tries to change the Constitution on Wikipedia, and ultimately, the GOP quietly agrees to the 83-17 split a week before the deadline and declares victory.

Of course, that'd mean dealing with a sane GOP. And frankly there's no evidence that they're out there.

I mean, for pity’s sake, you watch the Teabagger shithead caucus, always crying for their love of the Constitution is going to attack the President for sticking to the letter and law of the Constitution. Watch it happen. There’s never an egg-timer around when you need it. (Hat tip, Randi Rhodes).

The President is going to have to carry through with his unspoken threat, and while dear ol' Doctor Dad would disagree, I think the dire nature of what could happen would force to President to do it. I mean, if the GOP won’t deal fairly. If any bill the Democrats propose gets filibustered in the Senate. If the Teabaggers bite the hand of their Chamber of Commerce masters, what option is Obama going to have left?

As ugly as the consequences might be, they’d be worse if he did. If DeMint won’t come back to reality, pick the Constitutional fight, and pull the Debt Ceiling trigger. What would we have to lose?

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President Obama Addresses U.S. Chamber of Commerce (VIDEO)

Does President Obama have Corporate America by the balls??

Well, Noam Schieber seems to think so, and I think he's got a pretty good argument.

Two weeks after a mid-term election in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce helped thwart Barack Obama and the Democrats, the group’s CEO, Tom Donohue, gave a speech that read like a doubling down of sorts. “We cannot allow this nation to move from a government of the people to a government of the regulators,”he said. “Regulation is the vehicle by which some seek to control our economy, our businesses, and our lives.” Nor did Donohue leave any doubt about how he intended to prosecute this fight: “The Chamber will mount a vigorous defense and aggressive offense in support of the right to lobby, communicate with voters … and to do so without government harassment or undue restriction.” In other words, Donohue plans to spend gobs more money on lobbyists and ads to undermine Obama.

But, if you look at what Donohue had to say in a less scripted moment, it’s not clear that he and the Chamber feel quite as triumphal as they’d have you believe. Asked about Republicans’ mounting criticism of the Federal Reserve, Donohue sounded positively frustrated. “The Fed has over many, many, many years been particularly helpful to this government and to this country,” he lectured reporters. “We must maintain the independence of the Fed and be very, very careful not to louse that up on Capitol Hill.”

Oops! Having spent tens of millions of dollars defeating Democrats while explicitly touting the Tea Party movement, the Chamber is waking up to the fact that its brand new Congress may be a touch better in theory than in practice. Not only are many recently elected GOPers hostile to the Fed, they also oppose infrastructure spending, corporate subsidies, expanded free trade, and pretty much anything Wall Street favors—all top Chamber priorities.

Which is why the White House shouldn’t be in an especially conciliatory mood when dealing with the Chamber and its allies. Big business may talk a good game these days. But, in a world where the Tea Parties are about to get the keys to the Capitol, Corporate America needs adults like Barack Obama much more than he needs it.

Any article that takes the time to rip Amity Shlaes, minister of information for the country-club-industrial-complex (Noam's words...I only wish they were mine), is okay by me.

It continues on to the key graphs:

If you parse Tom Donohue’s speech, the administration should be sufficiently cowed after the midterms to retreat from key pieces of health care reform, financial reform, and greenhouse-gas regulation in exchange for business support on other issues. Business also wants to extend all the Bush tax cuts and preserve the tax advantage for overseas profits, which the White House opposes.

But it’s actually the administration that now holds the cards. For one thing, the regulations the Chamber is most exercised about also happen to be the most popular. The big banks hate the new consumer financial products agency, but the public strongly supports it. The insurance companies hate not being able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions; the public can’t wait for that provision to take effect. The Chamber would be foolish to go to war over these issues.

More importantly, corporations are suddenly in a much more precarious position than they were prior to the election. That may be counterintuitive given the Republican gains. But, while it’s tempting to assume that the interests of business overlap perfectly with the interests of the Republican Party, that’s simply not the case. The GOP wants to defeat Democrats at all costs. Big business has to make a more sophisticated calculation: It wants to defeat Democrats, since GOP rule typically means lower taxes and fewer regulations. But, unlike the GOP, the shorter-term costs of achieving this goal matter quite a bit to Corporate America. Republicans might accept a double-dip recession as the price of vanquishing Democrats. But, to most corporate managers, such profit-destroying horrors outweigh the benefits of GOP rule.

For that matter, even GOP rule itself doesn’t look nearly as appealing in the Tea Party era. In addition to opposing big business on some of its top priorities, like infrastructure spending and immigration reform, Tea Party pols are prone to dangerous games of brinkmanship. For example, many are drawing a line on raising the nation’s debt limit, which could create a fiscal crisis, leading to a collapse of the dollar and a surge in interest rates.

During the mid-term campaign, the Chamber breezily dismissed such worries by insisting the Tea Partiers would shed their most extreme positions once in office. "Some of the politics of the Tea Party and legislative practicalities just don't match up," the group’s political director, Bill Miller, told Bloomberg Businessweek in October. But the reality is that the GOP is much more likely to move toward the Tea Party movement than vice versa. That’s because the power of the movement is structural: It has less to do with individual office-holders than with the constant threat of primary challenges against Republicans who drift too far to the center, as occurred this year in Utah, Alaska, Florida, and Delaware.

All of which makes the business community’s greatest source of leverage over Democrats—the threat of ousting them on Election Day—significantly less credible. The more Democrats that Big Business takes out, the closer it comes to consolidating power for the Tea Parties and all the nightmares that entails. If that wasn’t apparent before November 2, it’s almost inescapable now.

Think Progress: And now, a list of the Foreign Oil Companies who have given to the chamber...

Like a dog with a bone (or Madison with...well, anything), the Center for American Progress is not letting this story go. Now they have a list of the Oil Companies who have given to the Chamber in recent years (weeks?):

Avantha Group, India (at least $7,500 in annual member dues): power plants

The Bahrain Petroleum Company, Kingdom of Bahrain ($5,000): state-owned oil campany

Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company, Kingdom of Bahrain ($5,000): state-owned oil company

Essar Group, Mumbai, India ($7,500): oil & gas, coal power

GMR, Bangalore, India ($15,000): coal power, mining

Hinduja Group, London, UK ($15,000): the Gulf Oil group

Jindal Power, New Delhi, India ($15,000): coal power

Lahmeyer International, Frankfurt, Germany ($7,500): power plant engineering

Punj Lloyd, Gurgaon, India ($15,000): offshore pipelines

Reliance Industries, Mumbai, India ($15,000): oil and gas, petrochemicals

SNC Lavalin, Montreal, Canada ($7,500): mining, power plant, and oil & gas engineering

Tata Group, Mumbai, India ($15,000): power plants, oil & gas

Walchandnagar Industries, Mumbai, India ($7,500): power plant, oil & gas engineering

Welspun, Mumbai, India ($7,500): oil & gas exploration

There's more (of course) at Think Progress.

Still more information from Think Progress on just who's trying to buy our elections (VIDEO)

Lee Fang has some more stuff up about the unlimited flood of Corporate Money flooding into this Election:

The numbers below reflect a bare minimum, and in many cases these corporations have paid ten times the amount of their regular dues to the Chamber in the past two years:

Microsoft’s corporate disclosures state that the company paid the Chamber up to $999,999 in 2009 and up to $999,999 in 2010 in its minimum dues.

Proctor and Gamble paid the Chamber $3.2 million in 2009.

Outsourcing giant CSC, which specializes in IT outsourcing, paid the Chamber at least $100,000 in 2009 and $100,000 in 2010.

Intel paid the Chamber at least $100,000 in yearly dues ($100,000 in 2010, and what appears to be $100,000 in 2009).

Drug company Merck paid the Chamber $234,000 in 2008, and still counts itself as a dues-paying member of the Chamber.

Utility company Dominion Resources gave the Chamber $100,000 in 2009.

On the Chamber’s Egypt Business Council website, Apache Corporation, British American Tobacco, The Blackstone Group, The Boeing Company, Cargill USA, CitiGroup, The Coca-Cola Company, ExxonMobil, Google, Microsoft Corporation, PepsiCo, Intel Corporation, Monsanto Company, Pfizer Inc, Philip Morris International combined committed an additional $375,000 to the Chamber for 2009-2010.

There is way more at Think Progress.

By the way, didn't Jon Stewart just talk about Coke vs. Pepsi in his Larry King Interview, and here they are donating large sums to the Chamber.

Second, about Citibank:

Earlier this year, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue admitted to ThinkProgress that CitiGroup, a bailed out financial conglomerate that still has not paid back taxpayer TARP funds, is a dues-paying member of the Chamber. Many bailed out banks are in fact dues-paying members of the Chamber.

And now the New York Times is looking at who is buying this election (VIDEO)

From yesterday's New York Times:

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.

And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has been critical of growing federal regulation and spending. These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.

They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber’s coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.

And these contributions, some of which can be pieced together through tax filings of corporate foundations and other public records, also show how the chamber has increasingly relied on a relatively small collection of big corporate donors to finance much of its legislative and political agenda. The chamber makes no apologies for its policy of not identifying its donors. It has vigorously opposed legislation in Congress that would require groups like it to identify their biggest contributors when they spend money on campaign ads.

Keith's Latest Busy Night...Part 2 (Secret Koch Party, Edition) (VIDEO)

One of the many, many Think Progress reports is right here.

Also here is short snippet Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), smacking the Chamber in their own house...to their face.



The Think Progress story on Waxman's speech is here.

Keith's Latest Busy Night...Part 1 (Selling America out, Edition) (VIDEO)

Keith had a great show last night, and thus had a very busy night.



From Greg Sargent (long and short...it's working, but slowly...maybe too slowly):

As promised, MSNBC's First Read gang releases its NBC/WSJ polling showing that voters do care about the secret cash funding attack ads, despite all the assertions you keep hearing to the contrary:

So how has the White House/Democratic campaign against the GOP-leaning outside groups that have been spending so much on TV ads this midterm cycle fared? Per our poll, 74% say it's a concern that outside groups have their own agenda and care only about electing or defeating candidates based on their own issues; 72% say it's a concern that these groups don't have to disclose who's contributing to them; 71% say it's a concern that the candidates who are helped by these groups could be beholden to their interests; and 68% say they're concerned these groups are funded by unions or large corporations.

First Read's Mark Murray adds this caveat: "Despite these concerns, our pollsters say that the White House/Dem campaign against these outside groups hasn't changed the overall dynamics of this election."

I think Admiral/Represenative Sestak would beg to differ.

Where I almost say something nice about a Republican Candiate for Congress.

I know that it's the stated position of this blog that we hate on Republicans, but in truth, we only hate on the crazier, more right-wing, more racist variety. Granted, they seem to be taking over the Grand Ol' Party, but they're still the loyal opposition, and every once in a while, one of steps to the plate, and actually conducts himself like it.

Today's almost proud example is Bob Gibbs, not to be confused with the Press Secretary, but a Republican Candidate in the Ohio 18th:

Last week, a ThinkProgress investigation revealed that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been using foreign money to fund its partisan attack ads this election. The very same day, the Chamber endorsed Bob Gibbs (R) in his campaign against Rep. Zack Space (D) in Ohio’s 18th congressional district. Gibbs said it was “an honor” to have the group’s support. In the nine days since, the Chamber has already pumped nearly $30,000 into the race.

Last night, the topic of anonymous donors to outside groups came up in a debate between Gibbs and Space. ThinkProgress caught up with Gibbs afterward to get his thoughts. He noted that organizations are required by law to segregate their foreign and domestic money and said the Chamber “absolutely” has a firewall in place. We pressed him on whether he just trusts them to enforce their own secret system. Gibbs conceded that he “wouldn’t have a problem with the Federal Election Commission having the ability…to go in and audit them and make sure that they had the firewall.”

That's a respectable position...to a point.  Why?

However, he stopped short of calling for groups like the Chamber to disclose their donors to the public.

Thanks for nothing, Bob. I hope Zack Space (not one of my favorite Dems) cleans your clock.

The reviews are in! Rove's lying, and not just about where the money comes from.

And really, are we that surprised??

Greg Sargent has put up a nice little list of the media and press reaction to most Karl Rove's and the Chamber of Commerce's anti-Democrat, Foreign Funded attack bull@#$%:

• A Chamber ad was yanked from two Pennsylvania TV stations after they determined its claim about Pennsylvania Senate Dem candidate Joe Sestak and Nancy Pelosi was false.
• A Crossroads GPS ad slamming Sestak over health care reform and Medicare was skewered by FactCheck.org for its "wild exaggeration" and dismissed as "badly misleading."
• A Crossroads GPS ad attacking California Senator Barbara Boxer for voting to cut Medicare spending by $500 billion was rated by Politifact as "barely true" and "seriously misleading."
• Two Chamber ads attacking Boxer for favoring freshwater fish over jobs were dismissed by Factcheck.org, though with some caveats, as follows: "Strictly speaking, both ads are untrue."
• Also in the above link, FactCheck.org slammed Crossroads GPS for making similiarly misleading claims about health reform in an ad targeting Kentucky Dem Senate candidate Jack Conway. FactCheck.org's conclusion: "Don't let Crossroads GPS steer you down the wrong road."
• An American Crossroads ad blasting Harry Reid with various claims about unemployment and the stimulus was dismissed by the Las Vegas Sun for "egregious" stretching of the facts and "gross distortions."
• That same ad was also ripped by FactCheck.org for distorting the truth and by Politifact as "false."
• An American Crossroads ad hammering Ohio Dem Senate candidate Lee Fisher over job creation and tax hikes was skewered by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as "incomplete" and "mucked up with distortions."
• An ABC affiliate in Colorado found that a Crossroads GPS ad attacking Senator Michael Bennet made a misleading claim about Bennet on government spending and conflated opinion for fact on the stimulus.

Apparently, those were just the Greg races. Greg is talking like he may put up a seperate list of the House ads that have been yanked.

Think Progress: You want proof of Foreign Money in this election cycle...here's a list! (VIDEO)

The Daily Show (again caught in the act of committing journalism):

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Steve?  Here's your proof:

Yesterday, the Chamber’s chief lobbyist Bruce Josten, who has been spoon-feeding much of the media distortions about our report, went on Fox News (whose parent company donated $1 million to the Chamber recently for its ad campaign) to again try to dilute the issue by dissembling about the Chamber’s fundraising and membership. “We have probably 60 or so foreign multi-national companies in our membership that we have had for decades, many of which have been in the United States for half a century or a century,” said Josten.

The Chamber is being deceptive. In addition to multinational members of the Chamber headquartered abroad (like BP, Shell Oil, and Siemens), a new ThinkProgress investigation has identified at least 83 other foreign companies that actively donate to the Chamber’s 501(c)(6). Below is a chart detailing the annual dues foreign corporations have indicated that they give directly to the Chamber (using information that is publicly available from the Business Council applications and the Chamber’s own websites):

Think Progress has the complete list here:

"[Foreign Money in elections] is a serious issue and we're going to continue to raise it."

First I got this from Greg Sargent:

The full-scale assault from the White House and Dems on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Karl Rove's groups shows no signs of abating. But is it already a political flop?

Some commentators are rushing to proclaim this offensive a political failure. Mark Halperin, for instance, wondered allowed today: "I'm not sure how this appeals to voters." Halperin then stated this as outright fact: "It's just not relevant to voters."

Greg then stated the obvious, that water is wet, the sky is blue, and Halperin has his head up his a!@#, because :

It's not easy to gauge whether this attack is working. But polls clearly show strong public discontent with corporate influence over our elections. A recent Washington Post poll found an overwhelming majority, 80 percent, opposes the Citizens United decision allowing unfettered corporate spending in elections, including strong majorities of both parties. And 72 percent support Congressional limits on corporate (and union) spending.

What's more, the Dem firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner recently tested some Dem messages on this very topic. It found that one focused on corporate interests -- and corporate spending in elections -- was a very potent one that could close the Congressional generic matchup gap by nine points.

Then I got this from Andrew Sullivan:

Nyhan goes after the Democrats for baseless attacks against the US Chamber of Commerce. It is very depressing to see them descend to this kind of stuff. What they need are not tactics and resentment, which is what we're seeing. What we need is a narrative of recovery and reform from Obama. He has the record, and he has made a couple of great speeches. But this distracts.

My view, and I'll say it again. Campaign on ending the long-term debt. Campaign on being the man who can bring America together to solve its long-term fiscal crisis. Call the GOP out on its fiscal record and its current refusal to specify what they'll cut. Remind people of the debt commission. Remind people we need to cut spending and raise taxes. Be the adult in the room. With a megaphone.

Afterwards, I sent Mr. Sullivan an Email thanking God he wasn't a Political Adviser to the President, because some of us are actually pissed off about this.

And finally, this from the Axe:

The White House will keep up its assault on outside spending by conservative groups and will continue to press the case about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign money, despite hints of retreat on the latter issue, senior adviser David Axelrod told me in an interview this afternoon.

Axelrod also took a shot at the fact-checkers at multiple news orgs who have concluded there is no evidence for the White House's broadside at the Chamber, suggesting fact-checkers should be "directing their ire" at the Chamber, rather than "in the wrong direction."

"The fact that these front groups are spending hundreds of millions of dollars from undisclosed sources on attack ads to influence these elections is a serious issue and we're going to continue to raise it," Axelrod told me.

Every once in a while, Democrats do what they say they'll do. (VIDEO)

What we have here is actual video of actual Democrats actually following up on what they said they'd do on Wednesday, punching back and punching back hard on the Chamber of Commerce's selling out America to foreign Companies, allowing their money to influence our campaigns.

I know!  Democratic follow up.  Shocking!

And it continues with Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC):

This is how much Think Progress is standing by its story on the Chamber of Commerce

Faiz Shakir has put up a new story following up on the revelation that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money for its attack ads against Democrats. The funny thing is, in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vehement denunciations of Think Progress hasn't exactly translated into anything like a denial of the basic facts of the story. So, now we can assume the following as fact:

1) The Chamber acknowledges that it receives foreign sources of funding.


2) The foreign funds go directly into the Chamber’s general 501(c)(6) entity.


3) At least $300,000 has been channeled from foreign companies in India and Bahrain to the account.


4) The foreign sources include foreign state-owned companies, including the State Bank of India and the Bahrain Petroleum Company.


5) The Chamber’s 501(c)(6) entity is used to launch an unprecedented $75 million partisan attack ad campaign against Democrats.

Nothing the Chamber has said in response to our story refutes those basic set of facts. The right-wing business group claims that it has a “system” in place to ensure that money is not being used for illegal purposes, namely to influence U.S. elections. But the Chamber refuses to explain how that “system” works, and is instead demanding that the public simply trust-but-not-verify.

House Democrats are going to fight back on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign money TV Ads (VIDEO)

About damn time.

First off, read the Think Progress report, or at least watch this bit of Countdown with Keith Olbermann:



My gut feeling is that Chamber is indeed doing taking foreign money. They are at the very least creating a climate of doubt over whether they are following the law or not (and according to Keith it is a law). Their argument is going to be "we're following the law" and "we're taking legal measures to protect ourselves". Problem is those measures are what's creating the doubt about their compliance with the law in the first place. So, transparency is necessary. Maybe Congress should look into doing something about it.

Oh, right. The House did. The Senate didn't.

Typical.

Anyway, today. Greg Sargent has some good news on that front:

House Democrats in tough races are being advised by Dem leaders to seize on new revelations about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's foreign fundraising to defend themselves against the Chamber's ad onslaught -- another sign of just how urgent it is for Dems to counter the massive ad spending disparity they're up against.

A senior Democratic strategist tells me that embattled incumbents and candidates are being instructed to seize on yesterday's Think Progress report, which raised questions as to whether the money the Chamber raises from foreign companies is being used to help bankroll its multimillion-dollar campaign against Democrats.

House Dems and candidates who are being bludgeoned by Chamber ads will start raising the specter of foreign money rigging our elections as a way to fight back against the ads.

"Every single House Democrat being attacked by the Chamber of Commerce should use this extraordinary revelation to their benefit," one strategist involved in charting House race strategy tells me.

"It makes a huge difference to people on Main Street if they know the Chamber ads are bought and paid for by Foreign owned companies that want to export American jobs," the strategist continues. "Our guys need to go for the jugular on this and this news offers them a pretty sharp knife."