White House hits back at Charles Koch

The White House fired back Wednesday at Charles Koch after a POLITICO article quoted him as saying he was “flabbergasted” by a recent attack on him and his brother by President Barack Obama during an energy speech in Las Vegas earlier this week.

In his Monday speech, Obama said that “you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem.”


“It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,” Koch responded in a phone interview with POLITICO on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, during the daily briefing, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Koch’s comments do not match with reality.

“I’m not sure whether to describe those comments as remarkably rich or utterly predictable,” Earnest said in response to a question from a POLITICO reporter. “It’s that when the president is advocating, for example, the end of tax subsidies that benefit oil and gas companies, that somebody who has made billions of dollars leading an oil and gas company, might not think very highly of that policy proposal.”

Earnest also took issue with Koch’s claim that Koch Industries has not lobbied for the continuation of the policies the administration is seeking to roll back. In his interview with another POLITICO reporter, Koch said that his company opposes subsidies for fossil fuels and that just because he opposes subsidies for clean-energy companies does not mean he does not want them to be successful.

“I think what is also interesting is the claim that somehow Koch Industries hasn’t advocated for the continuation of those policies. The fact is that Koch Industries has spent at least tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, lobbying Congress — these are public disclosures — in support of those kinds of policies, to say nothing of the millions of dollars that they have spent punishing those candidates that didn’t side with them,” Earnest said.

The exchange illustrates “exactly why the president ran for office,” Earnest said. “It’s why he ran for this office,” he added, because the oil and gas industry exerted pressure on D.C. politicians that had a quantifiable, adverse impact on making policy decisions in opposition to renewable and clean energy.

Asked whether he was surprised that Koch is so sensitive to the criticism, Earnest chuckled.

“I guess. Yeah,” he said, remarking that Obama is not particularly surprised to see criticism of his policies from people like the “millionaires and billionaires” who “start to squeal.”

“And I guess one billionaire special-interest benefactor chose to squeal to a POLITICO reporter,” Earnest said.

Obama has praised the Koch brothers in the past for their efforts on criminal-justice reform, something Earnest said would not be affected by the comments.

Philip Ellender, Koch Companies Private Sector’s president and COO of government and public affairs, responded to Earnest’s comments via email on Wednesday evening.

“We think it is hypocritical that Mr. Earnest attempted to tout the merits of a free-market system while promoting a new round of taxpayer-funded loan guarantees for the Administration’s politically friendly special interests. That said, Mr. Earnest’s statement about Koch is inaccurate. We have not lobbied for government subsidies or mandates, and we have lobbied against subsidies that directly benefit Koch. The fact is – and the White House should know this – we have fought against government boondoggles for decades because corporate welfare wastes resources, stifles innovation and has pushed our country to the brink of bankruptcy,” Ellender said in a statement.

“Now, if the question is, ‘Has Koch accepted subsidies?’ the answer is ‘Yes,’ and we’ve been clear about that. We participate in these types of programs where they already exist so that we can protect our 60,000 U.S.-based employees and not put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage. But to reiterate, we would eliminate all subsidies and mandates today if we could, including those we receive. ”