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Tea party activists are attacking a campaign finance rider in the $1.1 trillion spending bill that they view as a sneaky power grab by establishment Republicans designed to undermine outside conservative groups.

The provision would increase the amount of money a single donor could give to national party committees each year from $97,200 to as much as $777,600 by allowing them to set up different funds for certain expenses. The change would be a huge boost for party committees that have faced steep challenges in recent years from well-funded outside groups.

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Disgruntled activists fear the committees will unleash the added cash against conservative candidates in primaries, making it even harder for them to unseat establishment-friendly incumbents. Most tea party groups have political action committees for which individual donations are capped at $10,000 per election cycle. Some also have super PACs, which do not have any contribution limits.

The same conservative activists have long advocated for looser campaign finance laws, but they argue the language of the rider in the 1,600-page bill gives the establishment wing an unfair advantage by tweaking the law specifically for donations to party committees.

Conservatives support the First Amendment and believe there should be no limits on political speech, said Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund. Unfortunately, the new limits included in the omnibus only increase political speech for party insiders while silencing the majority of Americans who are fed up with Washington.

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin opened his show Wednesday night by warning listeners of the legislation. Calling the rider an outrage among many outrages in the spending bill, Levin characterized it as a power hungry move by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Do you know why hes doing that? Its to destroy any conservative any group that seeks to challenge an incumbent, to destroy the entire primary process, Levin alleged. Thats what McConnell is up to.

McConnell was one of the Republican incumbents targeted by tea party activists in this years primaries. But, like most other establishment candidates this cycle, he defeated his primary opponent. He will take over as the Senate majority leader in January.

Asked to comment, McConnells office simply noted that the Kentucky Republican was not responsible for the proposed rider.

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Tea party fumes over campaign finance plan

Its not often that Democrats and the tea party end up on the same side of a debate. But a hotly contested clause in the spending bill lawmakers revealed Tuesday, which would effectively allow individuals to contribute 10 times the current limit to national parties, is creating unlikely allies.

A string of tea-party groups are protesting the clausewhich would allow national party committees to raise money for conventions, building renovations and election recounts under higher contribution limitsfor returning too much power to the Washington establishment, highlighting the rift that has emerged in the Republican Party in recent years between its conservative wing and pro-business incumbents. The 2014 election saw nearly across-the-board victories for the latter group.

David Bossie, president of Citizens Uniteda tea-party group behind the lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court striking down decades-old limits on corporate political expendituressaid in a statement, What congressional leaders are doing is what they do best: protecting incumbents and the two-party system. The Omnibus rider will only strengthen the Washington Establishment in both parties and not create a level playing field for candidates who are outside the beltway. He called for the limits on contributions to PACs to be raised.

Mr. Bossie also criticized House and Senate Republicans campaign arms for making clear their mission is reelecting their own. Those groups, particularly the National Republican Senatorial Committee, were heavily involved in GOP primary battles in the 2014 cycle, backing incumbents against conservative challengers.

Ken Cuccinelli, president of the tea-party group Senate Conservatives Fund and former attorney general of Virginia, offered similar criticism. The new limits included in the omnibus only increase political speech for party insiders while silencing the majority of Americans who are fed up with Washington, he said. The First Amendment wasnt written to protect political insiders from the American people it was written to protect the rights of all Americans.

Club for Growth, another group in the GOPs conservative wing, put out a statement Wednesday urging lawmakers to vote against the spending bill. Among many reasons the group cited for its opposition was that the bill provides a fix for these jonesing politicians who carry water for their special interest buddies.

Matt Kibbe, president of the conservative FreedomWorks, called for contribution limits to be raised or eliminated across the board, not selectively applied for political purposes. He added: All individuals deserve to have their voices heard in the political process, not just the countrys major parties.

Democrats and watchdog groups have attacked the provision for allowing wealthy donors another avenue to influence politics, and several lawmakers pledged not to vote for the spending bill if the clauseand another scaling back regulatory language in the Dodd-Frank lawwere not taken out. The legislation narrowly passed a procedural vote to take up the bill in the House Thursday afternoon 214-212. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said Wednesday that the clause was inserted with bipartisan support.

Few Republican lawmakers have come out against the provision, though the bill has already lost some support from conservatives who say it does too little to push back against President Barack Obamas plans to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation.

One tea-party group voiced its support of the provision: Tea Party Patriots, whose co-founder Jenny Beth Martin praised the move away from using taxpayer dollars to fund presidential conventions. If the political parties want to raise funds from major donors to be able to fund the conventions themselves, it seems to be a step in the right direction of removing another burden from the American taxpayer, she said. But she criticized the spending bill as a whole, calling it a massive, pork laden, amnesty promoting, thousand plus page bill that no one in Congress has read before voting on.

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Tea Party Angered by Fundraising Change in Spending Bill

WASHINGTON (AP) Congress is saying farewell to its last two veterans of World War II, the member whose lodgings inspired Amazon's "Alpha House" show, a founding firebrand of the tea party, the senator dubbed "Dr. No" and a few dozen other lawmakers this week as another session of bickering winds down.

As they end their careers, many lawmakers of various eras are sounding a common note that they're leaving the institution in worse shape than they found it.

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Congress losing last WWII vets, a tea party fave

(Photo: Special to the Citizen-Times)

ASHEVILLE Asheville Tea Party challenged 257 voter registrations in Buncombe County on Thursday.

The group said the registrations are for people who no longer live at addresses shown in voting records.

Group Chairman Jane Bilello said it does not appear that anyone whose registration is being challenged voted this year.

She said the group, working with the Raleigh-based Voter Integrity Project, is asking that the registrations be removed so that someone who wanted to vote fraudulently could not pass themselves off as one of the people registered in order to vote in a future election.

A voter ID requirement is scheduled to go into effect in the state in 2016, although it is being challenged in court.

This is the groups second effort to have registrations purged from county rolls.

A previous one earlier this year was controversial. The League of Women Voters of Asheville-Buncombe County found that all the challenged registrations belonged to voters in 11 precincts in the city with significant populations of low-income people and African-Americans.

Asheville Tea Partys effort had the effect of intimidating voters, a league official said at the time, and it was later learned that many of those challenged were registered as living at a homeless shelter.

People involved in the challenges said they had not targeted specific groups of voters.

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Tea Party challenges voter registrations in Buncombe

By John King, CNN Chief National Correspondent

updated 9:18 AM EST, Mon December 8, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- Listen to how loud tea party forces are this week and it will remind you of a valuable lesson: for some conservatives, the 2014 wins are likely to translate into more disappointment -- not more power.

The big issue -- and the last big act of the current Congress -- is whether lawmakers will pass a spending bill that keeps the government running well into 2015. Some tea party activists insist it is their duty to deny President Obama any funding that would help him implement what they call amnesty -- meaning the administration's recent executive actions on illegal immigration.

Related: Obama tells the undocumented to "come out of the shadows"

Transcript: President Obama's immigration address

In Monday's conservative Red State morning briefing, Item No. 1 is a complaint against the GOP leadership:

"They preemptively surrendered and now want to both nibble at Obamacare instead of end it and they want to fund the President's immigration plan. House Republicans, this week, are set to fund Barack Obama's amnesty plan with the help of House Democrats. If you want to stop amnesty, you must flood the offices of members of congress with phone calls. There's no other way. They need to hear from you and that you demand they keep their promises."

It's the kind of talk that in the past has put Speaker Boehner on thin ice -- and remember we did have a brief government shutdown not all that long ago because he could not corral -- and control -- the tea party forces.

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Spending shows tea party loses with GOP gains - CNN.com