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player ready...“What’s the problem with the Bears?” asked John Kasich. “Wannstedt seems like a good coach.”
The Republican congressman from Ohio, an appealingly manic member of the GOP leadership, had switched topics on me Friday. But he was exhibiting the same passion which had been infusing a lengthy monologue on his true craving: the federal budget.
We promptly agreed that a most amazing transformation was in Indianapolis where Jim Harbaugh, erratic and uninspired during his Bears tenure, now appeared to be the reincarnation of a young Johnny Unitas. “It’s incredible!” Kasich said.
What might also seem amazing is how Kasich lured Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Ralph Nader, among others, to help him wound an arcane federal agency, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. One would be hard-pressed to find stranger political bedfellows.
Kasich (pronounced Kay-sick) is chairman of the House Budget Committee. Ideologically, he would appear to have zilch in common with Jackson or Nader. Zip. Nada. Nothing.
Yet, a populist streak is shared and heightened upon their consideration of an agency such as OPIC, which is a sort of federal insurer and investor for firms doing business overseas. Once upon a time, its aim had much to do with offering what amounted to political risk protection in the event a foreign nation appropriated an American venture.
With the Cold War over, and somewhat fewer nutty regimes to worry about, there would seem less reason for it. That’s if you buy into the need for it at all. Kasich doesn’t.
“The beginning of this is I felt strongly about welfare reform. I felt it was an enormously important cultural change.”
He also came to believe that OPIC exemplified “welfare for the rich. I felt stronger about this, well, no, not quite, but as strong about this as I do on welfare (for the poor).”
Kasich has a track record as a deficit hawk and confronting tough issues by building coalitions with Democrats. For example, he was fiercely opposed to the B-2 bomber, crafting an alliance with liberals that sharply curtailed the number of planes manufactured.
He has found that “in this town, it is easy to reform something that affects people without much power. It is not so easy as far as those with power. And I resent that.
“OPIC is using a lady in Schaumburg’s money to pass out to very profitable corporations,” he explained. “Then, if that corporation has a business that doesn’t work out, the lady has to pay for that loss.
“Once people understand that, they will realize it’s outrageous. This ranks right there with sugar subsidies and those forest roads, where we pay timber companies to cut down trees.”
Here are some projects approved by OPIC for help last year: $621,000 in insurance for Levon Travel Bureau Inc. to start a travel agency in Armenia; $4.3 million in insurance to a joint venture of Sequador Ltd. and Continental Grain Co. for shrimp farming in Ecuador; $7.1 million in insurance for Intertrade Uzviz, L.L.C. for construction of a hotel in Ukraine; and $12.5 million in insurance to Africa Growth Fund, L.P./Coca-Cola Export Corp. for a soft drink bottling plant in Ghana.
There’s more, as pointed out in the Sept. 16 issue of the distinctly pro-business weekly, Barron’s.
“Embattled Bankroller” was a tale of corporate fat cats getting OPIC backing for potentially risky deals and at terms “few private investment bankers could ever hope to match.”
For example, a very, very wealthy group of brothers, the Ziffs, looked to invest in several risky Southeast Asia ventures, and OPIC “agreed to help the Ziffs get more bang for their bucks by putting up $2 in low-cost, government-guaranteed debt for every $1 of equity invested in their South Asia Integration Fund.”
One of the brothers has been a big Democratic Party contributor of late and thus fits a pattern of OPIC “dishing out sweet deals to wealthy patrons of both major parties for the past two and a half years, providing them with terms to die for,” the weekly concluded.
The others include Steven Green, a rich real estate developer, who slept in the White House’s Lincoln bedroom on his wedding anniversary as guest of the Clintons and got a cushy OPIC deal to develop property in the former Soviet Union.
“OPIC is issuing guaranteed debt of $160 million to provide additional investment funds,” Barron’s said.
There are more, including big GOP contributor Maurice Greenberg, “named by OPIC to run a $300 million fund investing in Russia and the Baltics after Lehman Brothers backed out,” wrote Barron’s. OPIC is enamored of putting up hotels in former communist lands.
All this angered Kasich, who went through the roof when he learned that fellow Republicans, led by Wisconsin’s Toby Roth, wanted to double the agency’s funding. Its separate insurance and loans funds now total a combined $22 billion.
Roth, who represents the Green Bay area, says OPIC is “essential for our exporters, especially in new, emerging markets like Eastern Europe. It is a proven success, responsible for the creation of $43 billion in exports and creation of 200,000 American jobs in the last 25 years.”
“Other countries provide such assistance to their companies,” Roth says, implying that we have to fight fire with fire.
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Kasich, who represents a big chunk of Columbus, disagrees and began to counter Roth by contacting “right wing, OK, call them conservative groups, like the Heritage Foundation. Then I picked up the phone and called Jesse Jackson Jr. and Ralph Nader. I called Jesse since I knew I needed a chunk of the black caucus and thought they might not go for this since no matter how the government spends money, some members of the caucus will go for it.”
Jackson said this wasn’t hard. “He approached me on this and it was easy. On a host of issues, we have huge differences. On ending corporate welfare, we see eye to eye.”
In a House vote, Kasich and crew beat back Roth’s attempt to increase funding. As Congress hoped to close shop over the weekend, it appeared that he’d beat back a White House move to raise the levels (Ruth Harkin, wife of Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, runs the agency).
It looked to be a nice victory for Kasich, 44, a blue-collar fellow of Czech, Croatian and Hungarian descent whose dad was a mailman outside Pittsburgh. He’s a true-blue Baby Boomer, with a Boomer’s fanatic penchant for rock ‘n’ roll, especially the Rolling Stones.
He’s messianic about balancing the budget, fearless about stepping on toes of special interests, and perhaps the most honest broker the GOP leadership boasts. But he’s not quite the intellectually disciplined type you’d figure as a budgetmeister.
Even admirers concede that he can ramble all over the place when it comes to causes. At the same time, if you were forced to go on vacation with a member of the GOP leadership, he’s probably the guy.
For sure, Kasich might drive you nuts by waking you at 3 a.m. and announcing he wanted to go jogging and throw down a few brews. Or to talk about Harbaugh.
“Could the problem with Harbaugh and the Bears been (then-coach Mike) Ditka being a tyrant? Ditka could have been like one of those piano teachers, who so beat on the student, even Chopin would have failed.”
Cokie Watch
Picking up big bucks Thursday at a Business Week conference for corporate executives was pundit George Will, whose usual take is about $20,000. Labor Secretary Robert Reich spoke to the same group but, of course, was barred by federal ethics rules from taking a penny.
Meanwhile, the social safety net for socially connected media members remains intact. Steve Roberts, Cokie’s husband who was just bounced from U.S. News & World Report, is reported to be in consideration to run the Voice of America.