Letter: Koch Industries neutral on using shutdown to defund Obamacare

The Koch brothers are neutral on the act of shuttering the federal government to fight President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, according to a new letter sent to Capitol Hill.

A representative for the company owned by GOP mega-donors Charles and David Koch said that the firm has not taken a position on linking the funding of the government with defunding the law, although the company isn’t a fan of the health care law.


“A great deal of what you read and hear about Koch Industries is erroneous or misleading,” Philip Ellender, president for government and public affairs, wrote in a letter to Senate offices. The company “believes that Obamacare will increase deficits, lead to an overall lowering of the standard of health care in America and raise taxes,” Ellender wrote.

“However, Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defund Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare,” he wrote.

Ellender also accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of falsely blaming the Kochs for the shutdown.

In a floor speech Tuesday, Reid made reference to a Sunday New York Times piece that documented the web of GOP groups responsible for pushing the country to the brink of a shutdown. The article noted that a group linked to the Koch Brothers had disbursed more than $200 million to other conservative groups pushing for the shutdown.

“According to the news article, a former Attorney General of the United States, Ed Meese, and the Koch brothers, who have been raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get us where we are right now,” Reid said in a floor speech. He added: “We are satisfying the Koch brothers and Ed Meese, but millions of people in America are suffering.”

Without specifically identifying the Kochs, Obama also said Tuesday that big donors had contributed to gridlock and brinkmanship in Washington.

“I’ve continued to believe that Citizens United contributed to some of the problems we’re having in Washington right now,” Obama said about the 2010 case that allows corporations to spend freely on politics. “You have some ideological extremist who has a big bankroll, and they can entirely skew our politics.”

“There are a whole bunch of members of Congress right now who privately will tell you, I know our positions are unreasonable, but we’re scared that if we don’t go along with the tea party agenda, or the — some particularly extremist agenda, that we’ll be challenged from the right,” Obama said. “And the threats are very explicit. And so they toe the line.”