National Education Association spends $35 million on politics

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Watchdog.org:

The National Education Association spent more than $35 million on politics this year, including $3.6 million not disclosed as political activity.

 

During NEA’s 2014 fiscal year ending Aug. 31, the union dumped $9.8 million into its NEA Advocacy Fund political action committee, a “super PAC” the union used to make independent expenditures in congressional races.

 

NEA, the nation’s second-highest campaign donor since 1989, has decried the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, lifting restrictions on political speech and allowing unlimited contributions to super PACs.

 

FINE PRINT: NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia hates super PACs, unless they’re union super PACs

In September, NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia accused the U.S. Senate of bowing “to corporate manipulators like the Koch brothers, the Walton family and ALEC” by voting against an amendment to the Constitution limiting political spending.

According to Eskelsen Garcia, the Kochs and others “use the Citizens United decision to stifle the voices of America’s workers and voters by making sure their fiscal interests and voice come before the interests of working families. The power to speak freely is a hollow freedom for the millions of Americans whose voice is drowned out by the booming echo of big money posing as free speech.”