WASHINGTON — The White House says it's not backing down from President Obama's pointed criticism of the Koch brothers, saying the billionaire industrialists were "squealing" after Obama accused them of hypocrisy for benefiting from oil subsidies while opposing green energy.
Charles Koch told The Politico Tuesday he was "flabbergasted” and "dumbfounded" Obama's speech Monday singling out the Koch Industries owners for opposing solar power. “It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,” he said.
But the White House — which had already admitted that the president's use of the word "crazies" that same night was "a little flip" — wasn't backing down. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that the Koch response was both "remarkably rich" and "utterly predictable."
"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 publicly available 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.
Koch officials do not deny that the company benefits from federal subsidies and said it doesn't oppose green energy in theory.
"If the question is, ‘Has Koch accepted subsidies?’ the answer is ‘Yes,’ and we’ve been clear about that," said Koch vice president Philip Ellender in a written statement to USA TODAY. He said Koch participates in existing programs so as "not put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage."
"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 an interview with USA TODAY in April, Koch said he and brother David does not spend millions on political causes in order to advance Koch Industries' business interests. "We oppose as many or more things that would benefit us than would hurt us," he said.
USA TODAY
Charles Koch: We're not in politics to boost our bottom line
But the Kochs' business success has allowed them to fund a broad range of political causes, founding the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Americans for Prosperity.
That's made them a frequent target of Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Charles Koch told the Politico that he suspects Obama's Las Vegas speech attacking him was "kind of a farewell gesture to help Harry Reid,” who's retiring next year. Reid hosted the Clean Energy Summit and introduced Obama at the event.
"When 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," Obama said at the summit. "That's not the American way."
USA TODAY
Obama hits Koch Brothers for opposing solar power
Until that speech, President Obama had only mentioned the Koch brothers a handful of times in his public speeches — always as a punchline.
"Speaking of conservative heroes, the Koch brothers bought a table here tonight," he told the White House Correspondent's Dinner last year, "But as usual, they used a shadowy right-wing organization as a front. Hello, Fox News."
And at the 2015 dinner, he noted that the presidential campaign was already starting, "and I for one cannot wait to see who the Koch brothers pick."
Earnest said the exchange illustrates the kind of president Obama set out to be.
"This is exactly why the president ran for office, it's why he ran for this office, is that for too long, we saw the oil and gas industry exert significant pressure on politicians in Washington, D.C.," he said. And when Obama fights that influence, "the special interests, including the millionaires and billionaires that have benefited from that paralysis, start to squeal. And I guess in this case, at least one billionaire special interest benefactor chose to squeal to a Politico reporter."
Earnest said the spat would not distract from the one area where the White House and the Koch brothers are making common cause: criminal justice reform. "It certainly is not going to impact the desire of the president or this administration to work with anybody who is interested in bringing greater justice to our criminal-justice system," he said.
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