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WASHINGTON (AP) Organizing for Action, the advocacy group supporting President Barack Obama's agenda, is scaling back its fundraising efforts and cutting its paid staff in half as focus shifts to the approaching midterm elections, three Democratic officials said.

Formed last year from the remnants of Obama's vaunted re-election campaign, OFA raised more than $30 million in its first 15 months as it worked to build support for Obama priorities like health care, immigration and climate change. But the group's aggressive courting of big-dollar donors has troubled many Democrats who worry that OFA is siphoning sorely needed dollars from Democratic campaigns just as the party is bracing for a difficult election.

As of May 31, OFA will no longer solicit high-dollar contributions, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Kathy Gasperine, the group's development director and a former Obama fundraiser, told top contributors it would "not be giving significant priority to seeking out new major donors."

"During the remainder of 2014, we will work to strengthen our relationships we have with our national leadership, continue our robust digital organizing, and utilize our megaphone to continue to activate our network into issue advocacy," Gasperine wrote.

Large contributions that were previously pledged will still be accepted, Gasperine said. And the group will continue soliciting smaller donations from grassroots supporters, an OFA official said.

At the same time, the group's workforce has shrunk in recent months from a high of more than 200 to just over 100 paid employees, according to a Democrat familiar with the group's workings.

The reduction came as OFA was winding down a major enrollment push for Obama's health care law. The group had staffed up for that campaign and to manage 1,700 participants in its fellowship program, and some were on temporary contracts. Most but not all of the departing staffers worked on those projects, said the Democrat, who, like others, wasn't authorized to discuss OFA's internal workings publicly and demanded anonymity.

OFA said a key piece of its mission has been to foster "the next generation of progressive leaders," so it's no surprise that some of the staffers are moving on or joining congressional campaigns now that open enrollment for Obama's health exchanges is closed. The same goes for OFA's donors.

"We understand and expect that some of our more than 420,000 contributors will choose to shift their focus during the midterm season," said OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan.

But the move follows public and private griping by Democratic groups who say OFA is diverting funds that would otherwise go to Democratic candidates, thus hindering the party in the midterms. After all, Democrats have fewer deep-pocketed donors than Republicans.

Originally posted here:
Obama Supporting Group Cuts Staffing, Fundraising

It's the yin and the yang of the U.S. corporate climate.

At the White House, President Barack Obama played the role of business pitchman Tuesday, saluting 11 executives whose companies have chosen to gain or expand a footprint in the United States.

In Congress the same day, a group of 14 Democratic senators introduced legislation to keep U.S. firms from going in the other direction, using foreign acquisitions to avoid paying higher U.S. corporate tax rates.

The events illustrated the competing factors facing U.S. and foreign businesses as they make investment, market and tax decisions. The U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate, at 35 percent, among industrialized countries. At the same time, its workforce, low energy costs and access to consumers can make it an attractive destination.

"We want folks to know this is a great place to do business," Obama told the executives, including Ericsson North America CEO Angel Ruiz, Lufthansa chairman and CEO Carsten Spohr, who met just outside the Oval Office in the White House Roosevelt Room. "We don't always do what it takes to go after business around the world and make sure that they know the benefits of investing in the largest market on Earth."

The roundtable discussion by the executives and top White House officials kicked off a week devoted to promoting foreign investments in the United States, all part of a congressional election-year strategy to confront lingering public anxiety about employment and financial wellbeing.

An effort by Obama to streamline U.S. outreach to foreign companies, called SelectUSA, has resulted in $18 billion in new business investments in the United States in 17 different states and territories, White House officials said.

Overall foreign direct investments last year rebounded, from $166 billion in 2012 to $193 billion in 2013, still far short of the $310 billion in 2008.

In addition to Ericsson and Lufthansa, firms represented at the White House Tuesday were Ford, chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, toy maker K'nex, South Korea's Hankook Tire, Danish biotechnology company Novozymes, Canadian apparel maker Richelieu, Belgian materials technology company Umicore, French high-tech company Safran and Switzerland-based Zurich Insurance Group.

Obama's attention to the influx of foreign business coincided with new concern in Congress with a trend of U.S. companies seeking to set up overseas headquarters in part to avoid U.S. tax rates. The Senate legislation, which faces long odds in a divided Congress, would set a two-year moratorium on corporations acquiring offshore companies to shift their addresses to low-tax countries.

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Obama Hosts CEOs Whose Firms Are Investing in US

POTOMAC, Md. (AP) Working to fill campaign coffers for House Democrats, President Barack Obama poked fun at Republicans on Monday for placing an election-year focus on the deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and his namesake health care law rather than on issues he deemed more serious.

Standing between two flags in a white tent erected outside a supporter's sprawling home, Obama pointed the finger at the GOP and charged his political opponents with employing an election strategy based around making Americans cynical, angry and suspicious enough that they vote for Republicans in the next election.

"The debate we're having right now is about what, Benghazi? Obamacare? It becomes this endless loop," said an incredulous Obama. "It's not serious. It's not speaking to the real concerns that people have."

It was a rare moment where the president's frustration with the GOP's incessant focus on his political weaknesses bubbled to the surface.

Republicans have spent recent weeks pummeling Obama and his administration over the 2012 attack in Libya that took place on Obama's watch. For Obama, the renewed focus on Benghazi, where four Americans died, only replaces one headache with another; until recently, Republicans had been laser-focused on pushing repeal of Obama's unpopular health law as a way to score points with voters in November.

It's not true that Democrats are behaving as unreasonably as Republicans, Obama insisted, adding that the GOP has been "captured" by a group that's unserious and ineffective.

"I hate to be blunt about it, but that's the play," Obama told about 65 supporters who paid up to $32,400 per couple for a chance to have dinner with the president. Joining them were a list of bold-named Democratic figures, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2016.

This is the fifth time Obama has made the money pitch for House Democrats this year one of more than 20 fundraisers Obama has agreed to do through the summer for Democratic-aligned campaign groups.

Democrats are anxiously working to protect their fragile majority in the Senate, and would need a net gain of 17 seats this year to seize the majority from Republicans. But a combination of Obama's low approval ratings, an unfavorable electoral map and historical trends are all working against Democrats to dampen the party's prospects in November.

To that end, Obama was careful not to raise Democrats' hopes too high. Rather than urging donors to pony up big so Democrats can win back control of the House, Obama offered a more modest goal:

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Obama Raps GOP For Focusing On Benghazi, Obamacare

WASHINGTON (AP) While in Brussels for talks with European leaders in March, President Barack Obama held a little-noticed meeting with executives of a Belgian aerospace company. It was barely a footnote in a trip dominated by tensions with Russia over Ukraine.

But the meeting was the capstone of a lengthy courtship by the Obama administration and the state of Oklahoma to attract ASCO Industries to Stillwater, Okla., to build a new $125 million production facility.

The effort was part of an initiative called SelectUSA that Obama started in 2011 and expanded last year.

Obama this week is drawing new attention to the effort, convening business leaders Tuesday at the White House to advertise success stories in the face of continuing public anxieties over jobs and the economy.

Yet as Obama promotes the influx of foreign investment to the U.S., his administration and key members of Congress are also fretting over dozens of U.S. companies heading in the other direction. These businesses are merging with or acquiring overseas companies to change their address and gain tax advantages that can cost the federal government billions in tax revenues.

The most prominent example is Pfizer Inc.'s recent takeover attempt of British drugmaker AstraZeneca, a deal that if consummated would be the largest-ever foreign takeover of a British company. The potential acquisition would allow Pfizer to incorporate in Britain and thus limit its exposure to higher U.S. corporate tax rates. On Monday, AstraZeneca turned down Pfizer's latest offer of $119 billion, making the likelihood of a deal increasingly unlikely.

Pfizer's approach called a corporate inversion is the latest in a growing trend that could accelerate as corporate lawyers advise clients to get ahead of efforts in Washington to overhaul the tax system and close corporate loopholes. Companies that have created foreign shell corporations in recent years include familiar names like Tyco International and Ingersoll-Rand.

Though there is little chance of action this year, Republicans and Democrats generally agree that federal corporate tax rates, now at 35 percent, should be lowered while eliminating credits, exemptions and other tax advantages.

Still, the Obama administration's 2015 budget contained a specific proposal aimed at curtailing inversions and White House officials say such a fix would not necessarily have to be part of a broader overhaul.

In the Senate, Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan says he will propose legislation soon. Sen. Ron Wyden, the Democratic chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, says he also has a plan to deal with inversions, but wants it to be part of more comprehensive tax legislation.

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Obama Touts Business Influx; Some Firms Exit, Too

The Libertarian Victory Lap

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