Top Biden donor’s Treasury appointment raises watchdog concerns: ‘Special interest activists’

Watchdogs are sounding the alarm over President Joe Biden‘s move to tap a deep-pocketed Wall Street veteran boosting his 2024 reelection campaign to head up a powerful Treasury Department commission.

Orin Kramer, founder of the hedge fund Boston Provident LP, was announced in a Treasury press release Thursday as chairman of its Commission on Social Impact Partnerships, an advisory board tasked with making recommendations to the agency on millions of dollars in local and state government grants. The appointment of Kramer, who has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Biden’s 2024 campaigns and joint fundraising committees, comes on the heels of Kramer co-hosting a “Broadway for Biden” fundraiser in September featuring performances from Hamilton maker Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as singers Sara Bareilles and Josh Groban, a flyer shows.

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“When the Biden administration promised a return to norms, apparently, one of those norms was rewarding big campaign donors or activists, or both, with plum jobs in the administration,” Director Michael Chamberlain for Protect the Public’s Trust, an ethics watchdog group, told the Washington Examiner. “This type of arrangement just reinforces the idea that government is no longer of the people, by the people, and for the people but rather of, by, and for wealthy and well-connected insiders.”

Biden’s appointment of Kramer is the latest example of the president rewarding fundraisers and close allies with top administration posts. In June 2022, the president tapped Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who has given millions of dollars to Democrats and was subpoenaed last week by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee in connection to her purchasing Hunter Biden’s art, to sit on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, a body overseeing European monuments. In September 2022, the president appointed Monica Medina, wife of then-White House chief of staff Ron Klain, as the State Department’s special envoy for biodiversity and water resources.

Kramer personally contributed $350,000 in 2020 to Biden’s joint fundraising committee, plus more than $5,000 that year to his campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The hedge fund founder has donated more than $100,000 this year to Biden’s 2024 campaign, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

“Not only does giving influential posts to longtime political donors look bad, but also, it does little to assuage the public’s concern that the administration has aggressively sought to fill senior positions with special interest activists and proxies, creating an incentive for dysfunction, ethical lapses, and corruption as taxpayer funds are distributed,” Pete McGinnis, spokesman for the Functional Government Initiative, told the Washington Examiner.

Through his role on the commission, Kramer will lead the seven other members in advising Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the Social Impact Partnership to Pay for Results Act, which “is intended to improve the effectiveness of certain social services” and allocates taxpayer funds for programs across the country, according to the White House.

Those awards have included $20.5 million in 2022 to the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice “to reduce gun violence among youth” and $3.9 million that year for an Oklahoma program that “provides alternatives to incarceration for women with substance use disorders,” according to notices in the Federal Register.

Just last month, Biden hosted Kramer at a state dinner that featured Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his partner, Jodie Haydon, the White House disclosed. Kramer notably did a stint in President Jimmy Carter’s administration, and later on the transition team and in an advisory role for President Bill Clinton.

“Federal commissions aren’t playgrounds for rich guys who are bored with their day jobs,” said Tom Jones, president of the conservative American Accountability Foundation watchdog group. “Biden should stop handing off important policy positions to rich donors who are looking for a cool board to sit on.”

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The Treasury Department and Kramer did not return requests for comment.

“I am honored to serve,” Kramer said last week. “I am confident that the commission will continue to play a valuable role in implementing the SIPPRA program effectively.”