If you live in or near the San Francisco Bay or Napa Valley and you have a matter of concern before the departments of Commerce or Energy, you had a great opportunity last weekend to make a small investment.
For a few grand, you could get an audience with Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, and possibly Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
That was the opportunity House Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered donors this past weekend.
This appears to be a video of @SpeakerPelosi talking to donors at the @dccc retreat this weekend in Napa. pic.twitter.com/YsqRvM16ex
— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) August 22, 2021
The cheap seats to this fundraiser were $100, but to be an insider, you shelled out $29,000 to attend this fundraiser.
Pelosi and other House Democrats raising money to elect Democrats is standard fare. Being a member of Congress means raising money constantly. Many donors are ideologues or partisans who give their hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands because it deeply matters to them which party controls Congress. Others really support a particular candidate or member.
But paying to attend a fundraiser is, for many donors, paying to get access to a politician. This was why I found it so corrupt for President Donald Trump to schmooze with those who paid thousands to show up at Mar-a-Lago.
It’s worse when Cabinet officials are on the menu. Ken Vogel reported that Raimondo was expected. Social media accounts suggest Granholm attended. The Commerce Department and the Energy Department deal in corporate welfare, and so business owners have plenty of reasons to spend their money for some face time.
By deploying his Cabinet members to Democratic fundraisers, Biden is selling access to his executive branch policymaking.
Say you sought out hundreds of millions in financing for some clean-energy business venture but couldn’t find an investor or lender on the open market at the rates you wanted. Well, investing a grand for a charming meal and a few minutes of Granholm’s time might have a huge return, considering that Granholm’s fans brag that “there’s about $40 billion available for loans and loan guarantees to promote clean energy technologies,” according to NPR.
Granholm, in her confirmation hearings, bragged about her work bailing out failed automakers and subsidizing big companies. “When we focused on providing incentives for job providers to locate in Michigan in clean energy, they came.”
Biden and Pelosi offered the wealthy people of California an incentive — corporate welfare Cabinet secretaries — and the people came.
