Dark Money

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for allowing Senator Whitehouse and myself to conclude today's session.

I want first to salute my colleague, Senator Whitehouse, who will be on the floor momentarily. He has come to the floor many times to talk about issues relative to climate change and global warming. He has come on so many occasions that I have lost track, but it shows his dedication to this issue.

He has also been outspoken on the issue of campaign financing and what is happening in America today. We all know that it takes big money to run big campaigns, and we all know that many people are put off by politicians who are waiting on wealthy donors to give them the money to make it across the finish line. That is a fact.

I have always said that in this business of politics, there are two categories. There are multimillionaires and mere mortals, and I am in the second category, never having enough money to finance my own campaign, prevailing on my friends to help. It is too bad that politics has reached the level where campaigns are so long and so expensive.

Tonight Senator Whitehouse and I will highlight one aspect of that issue that is particularly worrisome and really should be front and center; that is, the so-called secret contributions, the dark money-- money that is being spent on political campaigns with no fingerprints. It is a growing phenomenon, and it is troublesome to think that our democracy has reached that point.

I am going to speak about one aspect of it, and Senator Whitehouse will follow me on the topic. I thank him for initiating this opportunity this evening.

Let me tell my colleagues what my topic is about. It is one aspect of it. We know that the United States leads the world in medical research. Because of the U.S. scientific community, HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence, polio has been eradicated in this country, people survive cancer and heart attacks in record number, and a child born today will likely live to be 78 years of age--nearly three decades longer than a baby born in 1900.

Thanks to the U.S. scientific community, we know the true dangers of tobacco. Now we are learning about the dangers related to e-cigarettes. But it was not always the case that the dangers of cigarette smoking were commonly accepted knowledge. For years, the tobacco industry claimed to be interested in rigorous, independent science. They wanted to sell less harmful products, and they wanted to support scientific research. Evidence has now been disclosed which unequivocally demonstrates that tobacco companies, by funding alternate research and funneling money into front organizations to do their bidding, have literally corrupted the science on this issue. They produced products they knew were no less hazardous and sought to influence elections to ensure the friendliest voices supporting tobacco were elected to office at Federal, State, and local levels all across the country.

If this tactic sounds familiar, it should. It is exactly what the Koch brothers are currently doing with respect to sowing seeds of doubt about the causes of climate change and helping to elect Republicans who are climate change deniers.

I have said repeatedly on the floor of the Senate and I will repeat this evening: The Republican Party of the United States of America is the only major political party in the world today that denies climate change. I have said that repeatedly, expecting some Republican to come to the floor and say it is not true. One of them whispered to me in the elevator after I said this a few times: I think there is a party in Australia that also denies climate change. That is the best they could come up with.

How did this happen? There was a time when Republicans were the leaders when it came to environmental protection. If I am not mistaken, I say to my colleague, I think it was President Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency.

When I look back on my own experience in Congress, there were Republicans who stood up and spoke up on the issue of climate change. I remember when John McCain and Joe Lieberman were the two lead sponsors on a bill dealing with global warming. It has been within my period of time serving in the Senate, but not anymore. It has changed dramatically. The Koch brothers, I think, are behind it. They didn't come up with this strategy on their own. They were able to look at Big Tobacco's playbook from years gone by.

The first thing Big Tobacco did was to question legitimate science. The Koch brothers got right in line. They have been questioning legitimate science when it comes to global warming, and they pioneered efforts to use dark money to influence America's public opinion and to sway elections without ever really revealing their true identities or motivations.

I look back on tobacco and cancer. I am one--probably, like most Americans--who has lost a dearly loved member of my family to tobacco and cancer. My father died when he was 53 years of age from lung cancer. I was 14 years old. He smoked two packs of Camels a day. It was a horrible death. He lingered for 100 days in the hospital before he died. It is something you never forget. There is hardly a family in America who doesn't have a similar story to tell.

By the early 1950s, evidence linking smoking and lung cancer was growing. Tobacco companies could have responded by taking steps to protect American consumers. What they did was to launch a conspiracy to challenge the science behind tobacco. In 1953, tobacco companies hired the PR firm Hill+Knowlton to lead a pioneering effort to discredit emerging science and keep people smoking. At the heart of this strategy was an effort to manufacture a scientific controversy by insisting there were two sides to the debate about whether cigarette smoking caused cancer. Tobacco companies identified and paid scientists who had expressed skepticism about the health risk of cigarettes, who were critical of statistical methods, and who had offered alternative theories of what really was causing cancer among smokers.

They also formed an industry-sponsored research entity that claimed to support independent research. Instead, the organization's main purpose was to serve the industry's public relations interests--namely, to sow seeds of doubt about the health risks of smoking and not advance science. Does it sound familiar to the scientists sowing seeds of doubt about global warming?

As more and more independent research found an association between smoking and disease, tobacco companies used their so-called independent research organizations to insist that there was a great deal of uncertainty about whether smoking caused cancer. These entities supported scientists who showed a willingness to generate data and provide testimony that would support the industry. Meanwhile, tobacco- friendly elected officials were happy to accept this bogus, fake science while also receiving generous campaign contributions from Big Tobacco.

The tobacco industry efforts reached new highs--or lows, if you wish--when, in the early 1970s, there was growing concern about the impact of secondhand smoke. Arizona became the first State to restrict indoor smoking in some areas in 1973 after a Surgeon General report mentioned that secondhand smoke could be harmful to nonsmokers. By 1981, 8 years later, 36 States had some type of smoking restriction in place.

I know this issue, personally, because as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives I decided to offer an amendment to ban smoking on airplanes. At the time, I was opposed by the leadership of both the Republicans and the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Of course, anyone from a tobacco-growing State or from the South opposed my efforts to ban smoking on airplanes. Well, it turned out we had a lucky break here and there in the House Rules Committee and got to bring the measure to the floor of the House for a vote, and I succeeded in passing the first restriction on smoking on airplanes.

It turned out the reason was obvious: The largest frequent flier club in America is the U.S. Congress. We spend half of our lives on airplanes, and we know better when people say: You are sitting in the nonsmoking section of an airplane. Everybody was in the smoking section in the back of the airplane was puffing away.

So that measure passed. I called my friend Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, then a Senator, and said: Frank, can you take this up in the Senate? He said he would, and he did, and the two of us passed the basic prohibition of smoking on airplanes.

By the 1980s, evidence had accumulated about the health risks of secondhand smoke and, in 1986, the Surgeon General concluded that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in nonsmokers and was associated with respiratory illness in children. Once again, tobacco companies didn't accept the obvious. They responded to the evidence of harm from secondhand smoke and restrictions on smokers by launching an effort to undermine the scientific evidence. They identified, trained, and subsidized friendly scientists and sponsored symposia all around the world to feature these scientists without revealing they were paying them to come up with these opinions.

In 1988, tobacco companies began funding the Center for Indoor Air Research. This is after we started banning the use of cigarettes on airplanes, for example. Like the other so-called independent research organizations funded by tobacco companies, CIAR--the Center for Indoor Air Research--allowed tobacco companies to fund and control the use of research favorable to their market position so they could continue to sell addictive, cancer-causing products to more and more people-- especially to kids. To shift emphasis away from secondhand smoke, the so-called research institute supported studies to weaken the case for regulation of tobacco.

Why is it important to reflect on history of 30 years ago? It is happening all over again. Tobacco companies continue to provide funding to third-party organizations that advocate policies that align with the interests--such as e-cigarettes--without ever publicly disclosing their ties to these tobacco companies. In recent years, tobacco companies have sought to advance the idea that bringing to market so-called lower risk tobacco products will actually benefit public health. They warn that overregulations are going to hurt their business.

Tobacco companies have provided funding to an array of think tanks-- the Heartland Institute, the R Street Institute, the National Center for Public Policy Research, just to name a few. These tobacco industry- funded groups have sent letters to policymakers, they publish op-eds, they write reports, and they issue press releases that mirror the tobacco industry's position, warning that any future FDA rules will burden the tobacco industry and undermine efforts to bring a so-called lower risk product to market. Many of these groups have historically been silent or opposed policies that have proven effective in reducing smoking rates. Do you know what reduces smoking more than anything else? Cost of the product. As we have seen States and the Federal Government raise the tobacco tax, we have seen use of the product diminish. They haven't supported that, of course, and they don't support smoke-free laws or mass media campaigns.

Last year, Philip Morris, notorious as a tobacco company, established the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. Let me repeat that. Philip Morris, a tobacco company, established the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. They are going to fund research to end cigarette smoking and provide $80 million a year for 12 years. Given their history and their continued opposition to proven policies to reduce cigarette use, excuse me if I am skeptical.

That is the problem, isn't it? Research from the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World or TV ads or op-eds from the Heartland Institute or the National Center for Public Policy Research just may seem harmless, but if the American public and elected officials knew that R.J. Reynolds, Altria, or Philip Morris--some of the biggest tobacco companies--were behind this research PR, they would be as skeptical as I am.

One more example: corporations and wealthy donors flooding cash into efforts to influence the American public and American political officials. In addition to funding bogus research, we know tobacco companies have poured millions of dollars into nonprofit, dark money organizations, which, in turn, spend millions of dollars to influence elections, never disclosing who they are or where the money is coming from. Dark money makes it nearly impossible to find the true sources behind the attack ads and political campaigns these organizations fund, but sometimes, thanks to the news media and transparency organizations, the donors are revealed.

In 2013, the Center for Public Integrity reported that the tobacco giant Reynolds American, Incorporated, funded several dark money groups during the 2012 election cycle, including conservative activist Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity--a conservative political advocacy group--and the Partnership for Ohio's Future, an anti-union organization backed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

The only reason we know Reynolds was the secret source is because it was disclosed at the behest of an unnamed shareholder; otherwise, these donations and the involvement of tobacco companies would have remained a secret.

Whether they are quietly funding attack ads or the release of supposedly unbiased reports, corporations and wealthy donors are using anonymous, dark money contributions to influence America's public, casting doubt on legitimate science and trying to sway elections without ever revealing their true identities and motivations.

It is not just limited to Big Tobacco and their campaigns to turn public opinion against tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws; the Koch brothers have built on this model and expanded the Big Tobacco playbook. They are pushing faulty research in an attempt to obscure the reality of global warming and using dark money to influence our political system. Why would the Koch brothers care so much? They are in the oil business. It is so a rich few can benefit financially at the expense of everyone else if they vote the Koch brothers' line--and that is at the expense of our children and grandchildren.

It is time to put an end to dark money influence in elections.

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