Teachers Unions Among Top 100 Donors To Debt Ceiling Supercommittee

Jeff Stahler/Columbus Post-Dispatch

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Morgan Stanley has donated more than $289,000 to the 12 lawmakers specially-charged with cutting the nation’s deficit, enough to place it at Number 33 on The Center for Responsive Politics’ list of the top donors to the so-called debt ceiling “supercommittee.”

Who comes in one spot ahead at Number 32? America’s largest teachers union.

National Education Association members donated nearly $300,000 to supercommittee members, favoring Democrats by a nearly 9-to-1 margin.

The more than $28 million in donations on this Top 100 list alone show how high the political stakes have gotten in the Congressional cutting process — as if the policy stakes weren’t high enough already: if the supercommittee fails to reach an agreement, cuts to education — among other programs — will kick in automatically on November 23. (Happy Thanksgiving, right?) Lawmakers have hinted this “enforcement mechanism” could send cuts deep into public schools.

Also on the list: America’s other big teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers. Members of that organization donated more than $215,000, all to Democrats on the supercommittee.

These donation totals are both chump change compared to the PACs topping the CRP’s list — Club for Growth donated more than $1 million to Republicans; EMILY’s List, more than $700,000 to Democrats.

But as Politics K-12 notes, if you were to combine the AFT and NEA’s contributions, they would be the fifth-biggest donor on the list — behind only the PACs, Microsoft, and AT&T.